Course Descriptions
Spring Quarter (S24)
Dept/Description | Course No., Title | Instructor |
---|---|---|
ART HIS (S24) | 100 ANC EGYPTIAN ART | OSORIO G. SILV, L. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) This upper division course will explore, in detail, ancient Egyptian art from the Predynastic period (ca. 4000 – 3200 BCE) through the New Kingdom (ca. 1550 – 1069 BCE). Beyond discussing the major categories of art for each period and some of the more famous pieces of ancient Egyptian art, such as Khafre’s statue or Nefertiti’s bust, students in this class will become familiar with the varied contexts, purposes, and audiences of distinct categories of ancient Egyptian art through the discussion of thematic topics such as identity, propaganda, and ideology. Together, we will interrogate how ancient Egyptian art (and ancient art more generally) compares to our modern understanding of “art” and think about the place of ancient Egyptian art in the modern world as compared to how it functioned in the past. | ||
ART HIS (S24) | 107 ANCIENT DEATH ART | ACOSTA, C. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) The art of death is one of the most important sources of information available to archaeologists and art historians for reconstructing the lives of ancient people. This course will explore the art and architecture of death and burial in ancient Greece and Rome, focusing on themes such as the function of rituals in society, religion and the afterlife, gender and status in life and death, and the political uses of funerary monuments. These topics will be contextualized in relation to the broader social and historical developments of early Greece, the Classical Athenian democracy, the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire. Related issues in archaeology such as bioarchaeological analyses of skeletal material, ancient DNA studies, and the ethics of excavating human remains will also be considered. | ||
CLASSIC (S24) | 45C CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY | BRANSCOME, D. |
Emphasis/Category: World Religious Traditions (Category 1) Detailed examination of key Greek and Roman myths, their interpretations, and the influence they have exerted on literature, art, and popular culture in subsequent periods. | ||
COM LIT (S24) | 190W GLBL INDGENOUS FILM | GAMBER, J. |
Emphasis/Category: World Religious Traditions (Category 1) CL 190W | ||
ENGLISH (S24) | 15 ALL ABOUT EVE | LEWIS, J. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) The biblical Eve was the first rebel, the first penitent, the first mother, the first genetic experiment, the first person to ask a question, the first scientist, and the first woman to go off her diet. No wonder she has always been an object of literary fascination, a mythic figure endlessly reimagined in response to changing ideas about female desire, curiosity, subjection, and potentiality. In this class, we’ll explore some of the ways that Eve’s multivalent story has been told and retold over time. That means embarking on the genre-sensitive journey through literary history that every English major should take. It also means thinking about what it means to read Eve from a literary perspective, as opposed to a religious or historical one, and about how different kinds of readers have interpreted her in different ways at different historical moments. As we journey from Genesis to today’s fembot EveR and…wait for it…Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, we’ll pay special attention to the ways that women or female-identified writers have imagined themselves as Eve’s daughters, while also examining Eve’s ever-complicated role in the gender ideologies of every cultural moment. Over the reading quarter, expect to meet the self-seeking bride of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the curious ingenue of Frances Burney’s Enlightenment comedy of manners Evelina, the fallen woman demonized in Victorian gothic literature and pre-Raphaelite art, the ambitious competitor and fragmented housewife of modern times, the African demi-goddess collaboratively imagined by Toni Morrison and Kara Walker, and Angela Carter’s gender-role-bending, fairy tale-inspired new Eve. If you’re a fan of Eve’s ‘other woman,’ Lilith, fear not: She’ll be making more than a guest appearance, since one book on our syllabus is George MacDonald’s Victorian fantasy novel Lilith. PLEASE BE AWARE THAT SOME OF THE READING FOR THIS CLASS IS CHALLENGING!!!!! Course requirements: midterm essay (4 pages), final 6-page ‘biography’ or ‘autobiography’ of Eve; a series of super-short creative exercises/response paragraphs; active participation and periodic leadership in class conversations. |
Courses Offered by the Religious Studies Major & Minor or other Schools at UCI
Spring Quarter (S24)
Dept | Course No., 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. | ||
REL STD (S24) | 17 ECON APPR TO RELIG | MCBRIDE, M. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) | ||
REL STD (S24) | 61 GENDER & RELIGION | SAMEH, C. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) | ||
REL STD (S24) | 100 HISTORY OF DEVIL | MCKENNA, J. |
Emphasis/Category: World Religious Traditions (Category 1) | ||
REL STD (S24) | 103 PROCESS PHILOSOPHY | DONALDSON, B. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) | ||
REL STD (S24) | 120 JAIN HIS PHIL ETHIC | DONALDSON, B. |
Emphasis/Category: World Religious Traditions (Category 1) | ||
REL STD (S24) | 123 MEDIEVAL INDIA | PATEL, A. |
Emphasis/Category: World Religious Traditions (Category 1) | ||
REL STD (S24) | 130 MID EAST DIASPORAS | FARAH, D. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) | ||
REL STD (S24) | 130 GREAT BOOKS JEW HIS | FARAH, D. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) | ||
REL STD (S24) | 130 SOC MOBILZTN ISRAEL | BURSTEIN, A. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) | ||
REL STD (S24) | 130 ISRAELI PALEST CONF | BURSTEIN, A. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) | ||
REL STD (S24) | 131A ZOROASTRIANISM | CERETI, C. |
Emphasis/Category: World Religious Traditions (Category 1) | ||
REL STD (S24) | 155 HIP HOP RELIGION | CARTER, J. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) | ||
REL STD (S24) | 165 RLGN&PHIL OF SCIENC | CHIN, A. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) | ||
INTL ST (S24) | 161A POLITICAL ISLAM | PETROVIC, B. |
Emphasis/Category: World Religious Traditions (Category 1) | ||
INTL ST (S24) | 179 MIDEAST CLIM&CONFLT | PETROVIC, B. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) | ||
POL SCI (S24) | 139 MEDEVL JEWISH THOUG | LEVINE, D. |
Emphasis/Category: World Religious Traditions (Category 1) | ||
SOCIOL (S24) | 150 SOCIO LENS ON RELIG | BAILEY, S. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) | ||
SOCIOL (S24) | 179 SUPERNAT FOLKLORE | DEWAN, W. |
Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2) |