Fall 2015

Religious Studies 001. Survey of Religion (4 units)
Wendy Terry

Lecture:
MWF 11:00-11:50A
206 Olson Hall

Discussion Sections:

Course Description: 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 and examples from the other side of the globe. 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.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities, Diversity, and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): American Cultures, Arts & Humanities, Domestic Diversity, Oral Literacy, Visual Literacy, and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Discussion - 1 hour.

Textbook: 

• Jeffrey Brodd, et al., Invitation to World Religions  (Oxford University Press, 2012)
   

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Religious Studies 001H. Religion and Law: Sex, Marriage, Divorce (4 units)
Mairaj Syed

Lecture:
TR 10:30-11:50A
234 Wellman Hall

Discussion Sections:

Course Description: Sex, marriage and divorce are ubiquitous features of human societies. This course will consist of a comparative investigation of these phenomena across different religious traditions, time periods, and areas of the world. In the first two-thirds of the course, we will analyze how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have conceived of the law, primarily by looking at how these religions regulated the institution of marriage and sexual activity. In the last third of the course, we will analyze how the emergence of modernity affected the way the law was conceived by the different religions. We will end the course by looking at how religion is involved in debates about family law in three different modern societies: Israel, the United States, and Egypt.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, Oral Literacy, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Discussion - 1 hour.

Textbooks:

• A Course Reader
   

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Religious Studies 010. Contemporary Ethical Issues (4 units)
Meaghan O'Keefe

MW 1:10-2:00P
2 Wellman Hall
CRN 73015

Course Description: This course examines how various religious traditions deal with the ethical dilemmas involved in  healthcare. We will study topics such as the end of life, caring for the sick, dealing with disasters with limited resources, growing up, birth, pregnancy, and conception. Rather than making judgments about what’s right and what’s wrong in a particular situation, we will investigate how different religious traditions categorize, understand, and encourage ethical actions in a given context.  We will also examine how religious ideas can, at times, complicate the process of providing individual healthcare as well the design and delivery of public health programs.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 2 hours.

Textbooks:

• None
   

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Religious Studies 030. Religions of South Asia (4 units)
Archana Venkatesan

Lecture:
TR 3:10-4:30P
194 Young Hall

Discussion Sections:

Course Description: This course is an examination of the religious traditions of the Indian subcontinent. Attentive to the political and social contexts in which specific religious traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Islam, were formed, the course will also explore the ways in which religious communities interact in South Asia. Thus, we will not only attend to the ways religion and religious ideas are articulated in a textual canon, but will also examine the lived/living dimensions of religious experience in the region.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities, Diversity and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, Visual Literacy, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Discussion - 1 hour.

Textbook:

• Religions of South Asia: An Introduction, edited by Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby  (Routledge Books, 2006)
   

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Religious Studies 070. Religion and Language (4 units)
Flagg Miller

MWF 10:00-10:50A
80 Social Sciences Building
CRN 73016

Course Description: 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.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities, Diversity and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

• TBA
   

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Religious Studies 100. Study of Religion: Issues and Methods (4 units)
Allison Coudert

TR 10:30-11:50A
105 Olson Hall
CRN 73017

Course Description: 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 test 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 credit (Old): Arts & Humanities or Social Sciences.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities or Social Sciences; World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

• Johnathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown  (University of Chicago Press, 1988)
• Daniel Pals, Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists  (Oxford University Press, 2008)
• Daniel Pals, Nine Theories of Religion [3rd Edition]  (Oxford University Press, 2014)
   

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Religious Studies 134. Human Rights (4 units)
Keith Watenpaugh

MW 2:10-4:00P
1150 Hart Hall
CRN 69785

Course Description: 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. (Students who have completed RST 90 are ineligible to receive credit for RST 134)

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities or Social Sciences; Diversity and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities or Social Sciences; World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper or Discussion.

Textbooks:

• TBA
   

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Religious Studies 138. Human Rights, Gender and Sexuality (4 units)
Meaghan O'Keefe

MWF 10:00-10:50A
1128 Hart Hall
CRN 73800

Course Description: Gender and sexuality in the context of human rights. Topics include women's participation in the public sphere, the right to change gender, the right for family privacy, and the right to marriage.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

• Yvonne C. Zimmerman, Other Dreams of Freedom: Religion, Sex, and Human Trafficking  (Oxford University Press, 2012)
• Arzoo Osanloo, The Politics of Women's Rights in Iran  (Princeton University Press, 2009)
   

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Religious Studies 160. Introduction to Islamic Thought (4 units)
Mairaj Syed

TR 1:40-3:00P
205 Olson Hall
CRN 72954

Course Description: This course is devoted to examining Islamic thought as it is produced in three different disciplines: theology, law, and history. In the discipline of theology we will read authors who wrote about man’s free will and predestination, the nature of God’s relationship to the world, and the sources of our knowledge of morality. In the discipline of law we will read scholars who wrote about the rules governing warfare. In the discipline of history, we will read how different historians narrated traumatic events in the historical memory of the Muslims, such as the death of the Prophet Muhammad and the election of the first caliph Abu Bakr. Many of our readings will consist of ancient and medieval texts in translation.

Prerequisite: Religious Studies 060 recommended.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities or Social Sciences; Diversity and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Writing.

Textbooks:

• TBA
   

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Religious Studies 190, Sec. 02. Securitized Islam (4 units) 
Flagg Miller

W 2:10-5:00P
922 Sproul Hall
CRN 73045

Course Description: Religion has long been central to questions of security.  In what ways have contemporary securitization measures across the globe shaped religion and what it means to be “religious”?  This course explores how security priorities in various cultures and state systems affect the lives of ordinary people through articulating, shaping, and in turn being reconstituted by boundaries within and between religious groups.  With attention to North American, European, and South Asian security formations and their relation to expanding notions of governmentality, we will consider how Muslims and Islamic communities especially call to attention the historical, social and economic contingency of claims to sovereign power.  The first few weeks of the quarter will be devoted to examining the ways security relations have been studied in various academic disciplines as well as in Islamic law, theology and philosophy.  After two more weeks exploring the effects of global security initiatives adopted by the United States after 9/11, we will unpack social theorist Brian Massumi’s idea of “ontopower,” an ecology of security orders focused on preemption, through four case studies of Muslim communities in France, Egypt, India, and the United States.  In all such cases, we will ask: how do Muslims as well as non-Muslims living within particular nation-state formations experience security prerogatives adopted in part as a response to “Islam”?  How, furthermore, do such experiences highlight commonalities in the predicaments and struggles faced by others outside these specific identity groups?  In addition to substantial weekly readings, students will be asked to submit a variety of written assignments and at times lead group discussion.  Through this work, class participants will be invited to think about the ways in which particular kinds of evidence and documentation can enhance a critical approach to the study of security and its religious dimensions.

Further questions can be directed to: Flagg Miller (fmiller@ucdavis.edu).

Prerequisite: Consent of instructor (fmiller@ucdavis.edu).

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

Format: Seminar - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

• Jean-Pierre Filiu, From Deep State to Islamic State: The Arab Counter-Revolution and its Jihadi Legacy  (Hurst and Company, 2015)
• Hussein Ali Agrama, Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt  (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
• Flagg Miller, The Audacious Ascetic: What Osama bin Laden's Sound Archive Reveals about Al-Qa'ida  (Oxford University Press, 2015)
• Wael B. Hallaq, The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity's Moral Predicament  (Columbia University Press, 2014)