Spring 2022 Religious Studies Courses
- For day, time, room, and TA information, see our PDF SCHEDULE.
- For all courses not listed below, please refer to the General Catalog course descriptions: https://catalog.ucdavis.edu/courses-subject-code/rst/
Undergraduate Courses
RST 001 Survey of Religion
Wendy Terry
RST 001J Music, Voice, Word
Lynna Dhanani
RST 010 / 10A Ethics Issues
Allison Coudert
RST 031 Introduction to Jainism - CANCELED
Lynna Dhanani
RST 065C The Qur'an
Ryan Brizendine
RST 069 Hindu Mythology
Layne Little
RST 070 Religion & Language
Prof. Flagg Miller
How does language shape the understanding and practice of religion? Do our own culturally specific vocabularies provide insight into the nature of the divine? Alternatively, does religion require us to expand our linguistic repertoires, both modern and classical, in order to appreciate the rich historical legacies of spiritual thought and practice? This course is designed to provide students with a basic toolkit for analyzing religious discourse in a variety of traditions. Special attention will be given to the embedding of verbal form in social contexts ranging from the sacred to the mundane, the mystical to the reasonable, the wondrous to the ordinary. Studies of ritual, symbolic practice and the use of media technologies will help us consider the relation of language to non-linguistic practice; they will also allow us to explore the complexities of religious language as a form of self-expression. As we will discover, religious selfhood is highly mediated by hierarchies of class, ethnicity, race, and gender. Throughout the course we will focus specifically on the legacies of Western colonialism on ideas about religious discourse and its most eloquent exponents. Material covered will include not only canonical sacred texts but also magical spells, prayers, songs, grammar primers, legal documents, lectures at militant training camps, and collective study groups.
Texts:
Joseph Errington. Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning, and Power. New York: Blackwell, 2008.
Nilofar Haeri. Sacred Language, Ordinary People: Dilemmas of Culture and Politics in Egypt. New York: Palgrave, 2003.
Ras Steven. Rastafarian Mysticism: An Introduction to the Mysteries of Nyahbinghi. West Conshohocken, PA: Infinity, 2004.
RST 122 Biblical Texts
Prof. Ewa Mroczek
RST 130 Topics Religion Studies: Sufism (Islamic Mysticism)
Ryan Brizendine
RST 143 New Testament Apocrypha
Wendy Terry
RST 150 Religious Ethics
Prof. Meaghan O'Keefe
RST 161B Modern Islam Auth/Trad
Prof. Flagg Miller
This course is designed to provide you with a range of analytic perspectives on modern Islamic thought, society, and politics. Special attention will be given to discussions on the nature of moral authority and its relation to traditions of belief and practice. Through case studies of societies across the Islamic world, and especially in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and Southeast as well as East Asia, we will develop a tool-set for analyzing how various forms of political organization draw from traditions of Muslim moral inquiry and redeploy them in contemporary life. With sustained attention to colonialism and empire throughout the course, we will move considerations of educational reform and textual interpretation to the ways in which Islam and Muslim identities have long been informed by hierarchies of race, class, gender, and economic power.
Texts:
Darryl Li’s The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire and the Challenge of Solidarity (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2020)
RST 171 Buddhist Art
Layne Little
RST 190 Seminar
Prof. Meaghan O'Keefe
Graduate Courses
REL 210C
Prof. Ewa Mroczek
REL 230A
Prof. Allison Coudert