Religious Studies Undergraduate Course Descriptions
Spring Quarter
| Dept | Course No and Title | Instructor |
|---|---|---|
| REL STD (S24) | 5C RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE | MCKENNA, J. |
| G.E. class and one of three main courses in UCI's world religions series. Two hundred students. No prerequisites. Lots of discussion on ten provocative topics in religion, a different one for every week in the term. The course is event-oriented and requires attendance for all sessions. Absences are discouraged and penalized. Since the word ‘dialogue’ appears in the title of the class and the word ‘discussion’ is appears in discussion section—you’ll be expected to speak and to listen when others speak. Here’s the method: Every Tuesday there’ll be a detailed lecture introducing a new provocative topic. Then every Wednesday there’ll be small-group discussions on the topic with your TA. Then every Thursday there’ll be a full-class discussion on the topic in the lecture hall with many student volunteers going on stage to speak and to receive questions from the audience. And so it will go each week, with a new topic introduced each Tuesday. No topic is ever settled or resolved and there is much disagreement among students. We must learn to manage permanent tensions that exist on matters of religion. Though everyone is asked to speak with absolute candor, it will be our policy to attempt civil, amicable exchanges. Course work is as follows: weekly short readings from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (via links; no books to purchase), weekly short written summaries of those readings, weekly short essays on 'thought questions’ pertaining to the week’s topic, and weekly short quizzes concerning the Tuesday lecture. No tests. Same as HIST 16C. (GE: IV, VIII) | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 17 ECON APPR TO RELIG | MCBRIDE, M. |
| Introduction to how basic economic concepts such as demand, supply, consumption, production, competition, free-riding, innovation, regulation, and rent-seeking can be applied to understand observed religious behavior. (III) | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 61 GENDER & RELIGION | SAMEH, C. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 100 HISTORY OF DEVIL | MCKENNA, J. |
| The course offers the history of an idea and the effects of that idea in history. Students will see very clearly how a single idea begins, how it evolves, and how it affects culture over thousands of years. We start by identifying a general devil-ish idea in world cultures, and then we trace the development of the specific devil mythos in Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic texts and contexts. We will then look at the ill effects of the devil idea in medieval Christian anti-Semitism and in the early Modern witch-hunts and in the persecution of heretics. We will also study the uses of the devil idea in folklore and literature. We will then trace the iconography of the devil in eighty or so images from 1500 years of Western art. We will view select movies with devil themes from over 130 years of film making. We might even listen to modern Scandinavian Death Metal music. The course work is as follows: weekly required readings, weekly required writing, weekly class discussions, and a final comprehensive exam. Inasmuch as the class meets once a week for three hours, any absence is tantamount to missing a week of class and therefore grades will suffer for an absence. Note: the class is not an examination of or promotion of the occult. | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 103 PROCESS PHILOSOPHY | DONALDSON, B. |
| Process Philosophy & Environment Process philosophy emphasizes events over things, creativity over stasis, experiential perception over cognition, interdependence over individuality, and metaphysical/epistemic revision over certainty. Using a historical and contemporary analysis of environmental ethics as a backdrop, we will explore how process philosophy—notably associated with the mathematician and metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)—offers a constructive foundation for thought and action in dynamic systems, societies, and multispecies communities. In addition to Whitehead, we will explore process perspectives from ancient Greece and India, continental thinkers such as Nietzsche, Bergson, and Deleuze, American pragmatists, alongside contemporary applications in new materialism, health care, education, climate action, animal liberation, engaged mysticism, and hip-hop futurist poetics. | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 120 JAIN HIS PHIL ETHIC | DONALDSON, B. |
| Emphasis/Category: World Religious Traditions (Category 1) The Jain Tradition is a small but globally-influential Indian tradition centered on nonviolence to multiple life forms, cultivating multiple perspectives, and mental/material practices of non-attachment. We will rely on the methods of history, philosophy, and ethnography to explore Jainism in relation to its historic and textual development, arguments with rivals about what is “real,” and its diverse ethical practices related to food, human-animal-plant relations, war, tolerance, among others. We will also consider the Jain tradition’s relevance to current planetary and social issues and students will have the opportunity to visit a Jain community in Orange County. | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 123 MEDIEVAL INDIA | PATEL, A. |
| Begins with the Gupta period's aesthetic legacies in South Asia's architecture, sculpture, and painting. Explores the dispersal of Islam throughout South Asia, including the Muslim communities of southern India. | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 130 GREAT BOOKS JEW HIS | FARAH, D. |
| The Jewish people have often understood themselves as the “people of the book,” because of the Jewish tradition’s reliance on texts and textual study as a central component of religious culture and practice. This course will take the idea of the book as a starting point for a survey of Jewish history, literature, and culture. Spanning the biblical period to the present, we will read primary texts important to Jewish life and culture as well as scholarship from various disciplines. In doing so, we will learn about the varied communities that produced these texts; the languages they spoke and read; their particular religious and cultural practices; and how they have understood themselves in the context of other social and political communities and movements. | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 130 MID EAST DIASPORAS | FARAH, D. |
| The term “diaspora” has traditionally referred to the historical exile and displacement of the Jewish people. In recent years, however, the term has come to refer to migrant and émigré communities that have left their places of origin—either by choice or under duress—and comprise a group defined primarily in relation to its historic “homeland.” Using the Jewish diaspora as a jumping-off point, this course will examine the history of diasporic groups from the Middle East (such as Iranian, Armenian, Kurdish, Turkish, Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese communities) between the late nineteenth century and today. Themes under discussion include transnational migration, trading diasporas, integration policies, intergenerational trauma, diaspora tourism, and memory. | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 130 SOC MOBILZTN ISRAEL | BURSTEIN, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 130 ISRAELI PALEST CONF | BURSTEIN, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 131A ZOROASTRIANISM | CERETI, C. |
| Zoroastrianism is one of the world’s oldest religions and has been the religion of the Persian Empire throughout antiquity. It has influenced immensely the development of other religions attested in Asia and the Mediterranean in the pre-modern period. Unlike other faiths professed in the ancient world, Zoroastrianism has survived to this day, and Zoroastrian communities exist in India and Iran, as well as in Europe and North-America. In fact, many believers in the Best Religion now live in Southern California. Zoroastrian religious tenets developed in constant dialogue with other traditions, during our classes we will see how this happened in the various historical periods. The aim of the course is to introduce the history of the Zoroastrian community from beginnings to the present day while discussing its religious beliefs seen from an historical point of view. The main text that will be used is Mary Boyce’s Zoroastrians. Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Other points of view will be introduced in class. | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 155 HIP HOP RELIGION | CARTER, J. |
| While for many people, hip-hop and religion are incompatible, this course challenges this assumption. With the tools of black studies, we will explore hip-hop (mainly the music, but also film) as a location within popular culture to critically think about religion, politics, and race (which includes gender and sexuality). | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 165 RLGN&PHIL OF SCIENC | CHIN, A. |
| Folks have all kinds of views about the relation between religion and science; some think they're irreconcilable, others that they're mutually supporting, still others that they have nothing to do with each other. But people are generally poorly informed about the nature and practice of religion or science or both. In this class, we'll examine the nature of contemporary religion-science interactions at both the theoretical and practical levels. We'll start by exploring lessons from the philosophy of science and how they may parallel issues in the philosophy of religion. In the second half of the course, we'll try to apply our theoretical insights to a variety of real-world encounters between religion and science, from vaccine hesitancy to indigenous knowledge in New Zealand public schools to a telescope on a sacred Hawaiian mountain. Along the way we'll learn how to speak thoughtfully across religious divides, engage with ideas radically different from our own, and dissect both academic and non-academic work. There will be goats and cookies of course. (This course has no prerequisites and presumes no background knowledge in (any) science or in religious studies. Please note that we will approach the study of religion from an academic perspective. All texts will be made available for free.) | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 161A POLITICAL ISLAM | PETROVIC, B. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 179 MIDEAST CLIM&CONFLT | PETROVIC, B. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 139 MEDEVL JEWISH THOUG | LEVINE, D. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 150 SOCIO LENS ON RELIG | BAILEY, S. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| REL STD (S24) | 179 SUPERNAT FOLKLORE | DEWAN, W. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
