Fall 2012

 

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Religious Studies 1: Survey of Religion
Prof. Wendy Terry, wrterry@ucdavis.edu

Lecture: TR 3:10-4:30, 126 Wellman

Discussion Sections:
Sec. 1 (T 7:10-8:00, 151 Olson) CRN 43737
Sec. 2 (T 5:10-6:00, 151 Olson) CRN 43738
Sec. 3 (T 6:10-7:00, 151 Olson) CRN 43739
Sec. 4 (W 4:10-5:00, 244 Olson) CRN 43740
Sec. 5 (W 5:10-7:00, 244 Olson) CRN 43741
Sec. 6 (W 6:10-7:00, 151 Olson) CRN 43742

This course is an introductory survey of religions and assumes no academic knowledge on the part of the student. We will spend the first half of the term introducing students to the Vedic traditions (Hinduism and Buddhism) and Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) through primary source readings and video clips from contemporary practice. The second half of the class will be devoted to introducing students to traditional and new religious traditions, covering examples close to home (e.g., Wintun and Heaven’s Gate) and examples from the other side of the globe (e.g., Australian Aboriginal and Aum Shinrikyo). This is all done in an effort to ask questions and hopefully glean some basic understandings about religion, its place in the world, and its dynamicity. Because it would be impossible to cover all religious traditions in the time allotted for one course, students will be given the opportunity to choose a religious tradition for a group presentation to take place during the last week of class.

GE credits (Old): ArtHum, Div, Wrt.
GE credits (New): ArtHum, Wrt, American Cultures, Domestic Diversity, Oral Skills, and Visual Literacy.

Texts:

• (TBA)

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Religious Studies 1C. Topics in Comparative Religion: "Sacrifice"
Prof. Allison Coudert, apcoudert@ucdavis.edu

Lecture: TR 9:00-10:20, 206 Wellman

Discussion Sections:
Sec. 1 (T 5:10-6:00, 101 Wellman) CRN 43589
Sec. 2 (T 6:10-7:00, 101 Wellman) CRN 43590
Sec. 3 (R 5:10-5:00, 167 Olson) CRN 43591
Sec. 4 (R 6:10-6:00, 167 Olson) CRN 43592

This course addresses the topic and practice of sacrifice in three major areas: sacrifice in specific religious traditions; sacrifice in the service of a country or nation; and sacrifice for romantic love. All three areas have religious implications inasmuch as they involve suffering, the pursuit of some higher ideal and/or physical or spiritual transformation, and even death. During the first part of the course we will focus on sacrificial rituals in major world religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). The central question addressed will be why has sacrifice played such a prominent part in world religions right up to the present? And what has encouraged humans to believe that supernatural beings demand the gruesome and bloody sacrificial death of men, women, children, and animals? In the second part of the course, we will examine the role sacrifice plays in formation of national identity and the promotion of patriotism. Finally we will look at Romanticism and the ideal of sacrificing oneself in the service of love. To help us understand these forms of sacrifice, we will analyze and evaluate various theories offered by scholars to explain sacrifice. Is it sufficient to understand sacrificial rituals as a means of communication with higher powers or as gift made in the hope of receiving something valuable in exchange? Or do we have to look more deeply into human nature and psychology and explain sacrifice as a response to human anxiety, aggression, and altruism? Finally, what, if any, role does gender play in sacrifice?

The course is introductory, and no prior academic study of religion is expected. The course fulfills the General Education requirement and emphasizes the development of skills in critical reading and analytic writing.

GE credits (Old): ArtHum, Div, Wrt.
GE credits (New): ArtHum, Wrt, Oral Skills, Visual Literacy, and World Cultures.

Texts:

• (TBA)

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Religious Studies 1G. Myth, Ritual, and Symbolism
Prof. Wendy Terry, wrterry@ucdavis.edu

Lecture: TR 1:40-3:00, 26 Wellman

Discussion Sections:
Sec. 1 (T 7:10-8:00, 151 Olson) CRN 43737
Sec. 2 (T 5:10-6:00, 151 Olson) CRN 43738
Sec. 3 (T 6:10-7:00, 151 Olson) CRN 43739
Sec. 4 (W 4:10-5:00, 244 Olson) CRN 43740
Sec. 5 (W 5:10-7:00, 244 Olson) CRN 43741
Sec. 6 (W 6:10-7:00, 151 Olson) CRN 43742

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the academic study of religion. The course is introductory and no prior academic study of religion is expected. As a General Education course, the requirements emphasize the development of skills in critical reading, analytic writing and oral argumentation.

We begin the course with a set of introductory questions: What is myth? What is ritual? What is a symbol? From there we turn to six specific cases of secrecy in various religious tradition. In tandem with these cases we will carefully read two major scholarly works on religion (Durkheim and Becker). Students will also work with the templates in They Say/I Say in order to improve their written arguments.

GE credits (Old): ArtHum, Div, Wrt.
GE credits (New): ArtHum, Wrt, Oral Skills, Visual Literacy, and World Cultures.

Texts:

• (TBA)

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Religious Studies 21: Hebrew Scriptures
Prof. Wendy Terry, wrterry@ucdavis.edu

MWF 11:00-11:50, 1130 Hart
CRN 43132

This course investigates ...

GE credits (Old): ArtHum, Div, Wrt.
GE credits (New): ArtHum, Wrt, and World Cultures.

Prerequisites: None.

Texts:

• A Course Reader

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Religious Studies 40: New Testament
Prof. Catherine Chin, chin@ucdavis.edu

Lecture: MWF 10:00-10:50, 1002 Giedt

Discussion Sections:
Sec. 1 (W 5:10-6:00, 251 Olson) CRN 39835
Sec. 2 (W 6:10-7:00, 251 Olson) CRN 39836
Sec. 3 (R 5:10-6:00, 261 Olson) CRN 39837
Sec. 4 (R 6:10-7:00, 261 Olson) CRN 39838
Sec. 5 (F 9:00-9:50, 140 Physics) CRN 39839
Sec. 6 (F 8:00-8:50, 140 Physics) CRN 39840

This course is an introduction to the study of earliest Christianity, and of the documents that came to be understood as a "New Testament" in the early centuries of Christian history. In order to understand these documents, we will be looking at many different aspects of the contexts in which they were written. Students will come to an understanding of how Christian thought emerged from: the political situation of Judaism in Roman Palestine; the intellectual and cultural situation of Judaism in the wider Hellenistic and Roman world; Greek and Roman religions and philosophies; Greek and Roman literary genres. Students will also learn the basic methods of modern New Testament studies, in order to understand why the academic study of the New Testament takes the shape that it does, and why New Testament scholars ask the questions that they ask.

GE credits (Old): ArtHum and Wrt.
GE credits (New): ArtHum, Wrt, and World Cultures.

Texts:

• Philip Wesley Comfort, The New Greek-English Interlinear New Testament (Tyndale House, 1993)
• Bart Ehrman, A Brief Introduction to the New Testament - 2nd Edition (Oxford, 2008)

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Religious Studies 70: Religion and Language
Prof. Flagg Miller, fmiller@ucdavis.edu

MWF 9:00-9:50, 1 Wellman
CRN 43733

How does language shape religious experience? Can our own culturally specific vocabularies help us understand, or communicate, the nature of the divine? Alternatively, does religion require us to expand our linguistic repertoires, both modern and classic, in order to appreciate rich historical legacies of spiritual thought and practice? This course is designed to provide students with a basic toolkit for studying religious discourse in a variety of traditions. Special attention will be given to notions of the sacred and the profane, the wondrous and the ordinary, the mystical and the reasonable. Material covered will include not only canonical sacred texts, but also prayers and magical spells, songs and rituals, sermons, and more contemporary genres, such as collective discussion forums.

GE credits (Old): None.
GE credits (New): None.

Texts:

• Joseph Errington, Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning and Power (Blackwell, 2008)
• A.C. Grayling, Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2001)
• G. Graff and C. Birkenstein, They Say / I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, 2nd Edition (W.W. Norton Co., 2010)

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Religious Studies 100. Study of Religious Studies: Methods and Issues
Prof. Flagg Miller, fmiller@ucdavis.edu

MWF 1:10-2:00, 90 SocSci Building

In the wake of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the discovery of the new world, religion became a problem as never before. This class explores the development of this problem from the early modern period through the present, focusing on two wide-ranging narratives. The first concerns the declining authority of God and the reciprocal ascent of the individual as it develops in early-modern and modern philosophy including, for example, the writings of Nietzsche. The second concerns the birth and growth of the academic study of religion alongside the disciplines of anthropology, psychology, and sociology. We will text these theories against a selection of religious texts and rituals from a wide variety of ancient and contemporary traditions. Students are encouraged to investigate examples of particular interest to them (perhaps something from a prior Religious Studies course). This course is ideally taken no later than the junior year.

Prerequisite: None

GE credits (Old): None.
GE credits (New): ArtHum, Wrt, and World Cultures

Texts:

• Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Oxford, 2008)
• Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Vintage, 1995)
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody(Oxford, 2009)
• Sigmund Freud, Three Cases of Histories (Touchstone, 1996)

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Religious Studies 104: Christianity, 1450-1700 (4 Units)
Prof. Allison Coudert (apcoudert@ucdavis.edu)

TR 1:40-3:00, 101 Olson
CRN 39847

Most people do not realize that the period of the Catholic and Protestant Reformations (roughly 1450-1660) was one of extreme mental and physical violence, during which many individuals were compelled to abandon their most cherished beliefs, forced to flee the cities, towns, and villages in which they were born, and even killed because of their religious views. The violence characterizing the era has led some scholars to describe it as the real “Dark Ages,” when religious and secular authorities began to exert unprecedented control over the beliefs and behavior of individuals.

Orthodoxy was the flip side of heresy, and it is therefore not surprising that the Catholic Inquisition reached the apogee of its power during this time or that executions for religious deviance, witchcraft, and magic were more numerous than ever before. To be right about religion was to be right about God and salvation, and anyone who disagreed had to be on the side of the devil and deserved to die. But for all the devastation and destruction, the Reformation period also fostered new ways of thinking about God, nature, man, and society that provided the foundation for our modern world. As this course will show, the conflict between Catholics and Protestants over scripture, the sacraments, miracles, relics, and the role of saints involved crucial questions concerning the authority and credibility of the Christian revelation, the origin, antiquity, and history of the physical world, the nature of human beings, and the basis of ethics and morality. Every one of these involved the larger problem of what constitutes knowledge and how knowledge may be obtained.

GE credits (Old): ArtHum, Div, and Wrt.
GE credits (New): None.

Text:

• Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing)
• A Course Reader (Available at Davis Copy Shop)

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Religious Studies 130. Topics in Religions Studies: "Sin and Atonement
Prof. Naomi Janowitz, nhjanowitz@ucdavis.edu

TR 9:00-10:20, 1007 Giedt
CRN 39848

For this fall, this topical course will focus on the issue of sin and atonement. This seminar will focus on 1) concepts of sin, atonement and forgiveness in ancient texts including Greek and Latin classical literature, Hebrew Scriptures, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament; and 2) recent scholarship in this field from a selection of major scholars.  

 

GE credits (Old): None.
GE credits (New): Writing and World Cultures.

Prerequisites: None.

Texts:

• A Course Reader
• Sin: A History by Gary Anderson
• Sin: The Early History of an Idea by Paula Frideriksen
• Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea by David Konstan

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Religious Studies 134. Human Rights
Prof. Meaghan O'Keefe, mmokeefe@ucdavis.edu

TR 10:30-11:50, 217 Olson
CRN 43783

This upper division course introduces students to the comparative and critical study of Human Rights. Students will study the theoretical, historical and practical foundations of human rights in various civilizations, cultures and religions, evaluate the role of Human Rights within western and non-western societies, and examine the role of human rights thinking, policy and institutions in the contemporary world. Of particular interest will be the intersection of the question of human rights and religious difference and the role religious institutions and movements have in the protection/violation of human rights.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credits (Old): ArtHum, Div, and Wrt.
GE credits (New): ArtHum or SocSci, Wrt, and World Cultures

Texts:

• A Course Reader