Fall Quarter 2025

Fall Quarter 2025

• For day, time, room, and TA information, see our: 
  PDF Schedule or Schedule Builder
• For all courses not described here, see:
  Catalog Descriptions

Course Descriptions & Flyers

• RST 001B — Death & Afterlife
  Ryan Brizendine
• Course Description: Introduction to comparative religion, focusing on the theme of death and the afterlife in different religious traditions.
  General Education: Arts & Humanities (AH); Oral Skills (OL); Visual Literacy (VL); World Cultures (WC); Writing Experience (WE).
• RST 034 — Introduction to Buddhism
  Layne Little
• Course Description: Buddhism in its pan-Asian manifestations, from its beginning in India to its development in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, Central Asia, China and Japan; teachings and practices, socio-political and cultural impact. 
  General Education: Arts & Humanities (AH); Visual Literacy (VL); World Cultures (WC); Writing Experience (WE).
• RST 068 — Introduction to Hinduism
  Archana Venkatesan

• Course Description: Survey of the diversity of Hindu traditions from ancient to the colonial period, including the development of temple worship, pilgrimage, goddess worship and regional festivals.
  General Education: Arts & Humanities (AH); Visual Literacy (VL); World Cultures (WC); Writing Experience (WE).

• 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.
  General Education: Arts & Humanities (AH); World Cultures (WC); Writing Experience (WE).
• RST 102 — Christian Origins
  Wendy Terry

• Course Description: Development of Christianity from the end of the 1st century through the major controversies of the 5th century. Emphasis on the relationship between the new religious movement and the Roman Empire, and issues of early Christian identity and diversity.
  Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor.
  General Education: Arts & Humanities (AH); World Cultures (WC); Writing Experience (WE).

• RST 115 — Mysticism
  Wendy Terry

• Course Description: Historical and descriptive analysis of selected key figures in mystical traditions and readings of representative mystical texts. Analytic term paper.
  Prerequisite(s): One lower division Religious Studies course.
  General Education: Arts & Humanities (AH); Oral Skills (OL); Visual Literacy (VL); World Cultures (WC); Writing Experience (WE).

• RST 130 — Topics in Religious Studies
  Meaghan O'Keefe

• Course Description: Thematic study of a phenomenon in more than one religious tradition or of the relationship between religion and another cultural phenomenon. Topics may include archeology and the Bible, women and religion, religion and violence.
  Prerequisite(s): RST 001 or RST 002 or RST 003A or RST 003B or RST 003C; or consent of instructor.
  General Education: World Cultures (WC); Writing Experience (WE).

• RST 137 — Topics in Buddhism
  Layne Little
• Course Description: Thematic exploration of historic developments, periods, regions and sects in Buddhism from an interdisciplinary perspective.
  General Education: Arts & Humanities (AH); World Cultures (WC); Writing Experience (WE).
• RST 152 — Justice, Equity, & Privacy in Medical Humanities
  Meaghan O'Keefe
• Course Description: Global issues of justice, equity, and fairness in healthcare and biomedical research. Emphasis on issues of race, gender, paternalism, and genetic privacy. Texts include scholarly articles, fiction, and film.
  General Education: Arts & Humanities (AH) or Science & Engineering (SE); American Cultures, Governance, & History (ACGH); Domestic Diversity (DD); Writing Experience (WE).