Fall Quarter 2025

For day, time, room, and TA information, see our PDF Schedule or the class search tool https://registrar-apps.ucdavis.edu/courses/search/index.cfm.
For all courses not described here, please refer to the General Catalog course descriptions: https://catalog.ucdavis.edu/courses-subject-code/rst/

RST 001B — Death & Afterlife
Ryan Brizendine

RST 034 — Introduction to Buddhism
Layne Little

RST 068 — Introduction to Hinduism
Archana Venkatesan

RST 070 — Religion & Language
Ryan Brizendine

This course explores the complex relation between religion and language across multiple traditions and historical contexts. Topics include the “magic” of meaning, revelation and theories of sacred language, the performative power of ritual speech, the logic of myth and scriptural storytelling, religious symbolism and metaphor, interpretation and authority, mysticism and the limits of language, relations between poetry and prophecy, and multiple traditions of religious poetics—of haiku and haiga in Japan, rasa and emotive evocation in South Asia, ecstatic verse in Sufism (Rumi), and “Orphic” poetry in Europe (Blake, Hölderlin, Rilke, Eliot)—concluding with reflections on secularism, desacralization, and the problems and possibilities of religious language today. Through pregnant primary texts & influential secondary studies students will investigate how language functions as a vehicle of divine presence, communal identity, theological meaning, and spiritual transformation.

RST 102 — Christian Origins
Wendy Terry

RST 115 — Mysticism
Wendy Terry

RST 130 — Topics in Religious Studies
Meaghan O'Keefe

RST 137 — Topics in Buddhism
Layne Little

RST 152 — Justice, Equity, & Privacy in Medical Humanities
Meaghan O'Keefe