Winter 2017

Religious Studies 001C. Sacrifice (4 units)          
Seth Sanders

Lecture:
MWF 10:00-10:50A
194 Young Hall

Course Description: Introduction to comparative religion, focusing on the theme of sacrifice in different religious traditions.

Prerequisite: None.

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

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

Textbook: 

• The Jewish Study Bible [2nd Edition], edited by Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler  (Oxford University Press, 2014)
  

---

Religious Studies 001H. Sex, Marriage and Divorce in Medieval and Modern Society (4 units)
Mairaj Syed

Lecture:
TR 3:10-4:30P
216 Wellman Hall

Discussion Sections:

Course Description: Sex, marriage and divorce are practices common to many different 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:

• TBA
   

---

Religious Studies 012. Emergence of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (4 units)
Eva Mroczek

Lecture:
TR 9:00-10:20A
206 Olson Hall

Discussion Sections:

Course Description: History of religion in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, from the Persian period through the rise of Islam. Emphasis on historical and social contexts of the formation of new traditions, in particular Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Prerequisite: None.

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

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

Textbooks:

• Al Qur'an: A Contemporary Translation, translated by Ahmed Ali  (Princeton University Press, 2001)

Recommended:

• HarperCollins Study Bible - Student Edition: Fully Revised and Updated, edited by Harold W. Attridge and Wayne A. Meeks  (HarperOne Press, 2006)
   

---

Religious Studies 045. Christianity (4 units)
Wendy Terry

MWF 9:00-9:50A
148 Physics Building
CRN 40481

Course Description: Major concepts and practices in the Christian tradition. Survey of the history of Christianity and Christian expansion from antiquity to modern times. Course pays particular attention to Christianity in China, India, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

Prerequisite: None.

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

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

Textbooks:

• TBA
   

---

Religious Studies 060. Introduction to Islam (4 units)
Mairaj Syed

TR 1:40-3:00P
184 Young Hall
CRN 40482

Course Description: This course seeks to provide an introduction to pre-modern and contemporary Islam. We will study the central beliefs, institutions, and practices that constitute Islam.  We will start with Muhammad’s message in seventh century Arabia.  We will then examine the intellectual traditions of Islamic law, theology, and mysticism in medieval Muslim societies.  Starting in the 19th century, these same societies underwent massive structural change with the advent of colonial occupations.  We will study the impact of Western colonialism on the structure of religious authority in Islam.  In the last few weeks, we will study themes that have figured prominently in popular media portrayals of Muslims in the last few decades, notably gender and Islamic politics, including the radical variety.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities or Social Sciences; Domestic 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
   

---

Religious Studies 075. Introduction to Chinese Philosophy (4 units)
Thorian Harris

TR 4:40-6:00P
223 Olson Hall
CRN 44801

Course Description: Introduction to Chinese philosophy from classical pre-modern times; emphasis on basic concepts and their impact on social conduct; the Age of Philosophers, the Han synthesis, the medieval Buddhist contribution.

Prerequisite: None. 

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

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours.

Textbooks:

• TBA
   

---

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

TR 10:30-11:50A
141 Olson Hall
CRN 44754

Course Description: This course will focus on four basic questions: 1) What is religion? 2) What is the origin and function of religion? 3) What methods and disciplinary approaches have been used in the study of religion? And finally, 4) What are some of the major critical issues in modern religion? These questions have received and continue to receive different and often conflicting answers. For example, a number of scholars regard religion as sui generis, as a preexisting reality that is separate and apart from all other human activities and institutions, while others contend that religion is a human and cultural construct. The first group locates the origin of religion in human responses to what has been described as the “Sacred” or the “Holy.” The second categorizes religion variously as a response to human needs, fears, and anxieties or, to put it more broadly, as an attempt to comprehend and deal with the problems of individual and social existence. In the former case, religion is the appropriate response to an existing supernatural reality, while in the latter it is a human projection with no necessary reference to any actuality. The issue of how religion should be studied has also proved divisive. Is it legitimate to treat religious texts as human and historical products influenced by the times and places in which they were written, or is that to profane them? Is religion compatible with science? With feminism? Is religion inherently violent? In an increasingly global world, where different religious traditions come into contact, often with competing claims to a single, absolute truth, these questions have crucial political, ethical, and social ramifications. Finally, we will rethink the issue of secularization to understand why religion persists when so many intellectuals so confidently predicted its demise.

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:

• All readings online
   

---

Religious Studies 115. Mysticism (4 units)
Wendy Terry

MWF 11:00-11:50A
80 Social Sciences Building
CRN 43789

Course Description: This course introduces students to the historical and descriptive analysis of selected key figures in mystical traditions and readings of representative mystical texts.

Prerequisite: One lower division Religious Studies course. 

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

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

• TBA
   

---

Religious Studies 120. Religion, Magic and Science (4 units)     [Cross-listed with STS 120]
Allison Coudert

TR 1:40-3:00P
108 Hoagland Hall
CRN 44769

Course Description: Why did the great Sir Isaac Newton spend more time in his alchemical laboratory than working on the physics for which he is just famous? Why do some 34% of Americans take the Bible as a scientific text and reject the conclusions of modern science? What do these facts tell us about the relationship between religion, magic, and science? Are they inevitably at loggerheads or could one argue that religion and magic actually fostered modern science? Topics to be explored to help us understand these larger questions include: how has magic been defined and who defines it; the rise of science in the West and the contribution of Christianity and Islam; the European witch hunts; the trial of Galileo; the debate over Darwin; and finally, we will look at contemporary evaluations of science— especially the developing field of “Transhumanism”—and investigate why its proponents think that science and technology can make us smarter, healthier, happier, and more fulfilled, while its detractors predict an apocalyptic scenario of dehumanization and the end of society as we know it.

Clearly, we have many interesting as well as contentious issues to think about during the quarter!

Prerequisite: None. 

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

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Writing.

Textbooks:

• All readings online
   

---

Religious Studies 122. Studies in Biblical Texts (4 units)
Seth Sanders

MWF 12:10-1:00P
105 Olson Hall
CRN 43790

Course Description: Study of a book from the Prophets or writings from critical, historical, and religious perspectives. May be repeated once for credit in different subject area.

Prerequisite: Religious Studies 021. 

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

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

• TBA
  

---

Religious Studies 124. "God on Trial": Questioning Divine Justice (4 units)
Eva Mroczek

TR 3:10-4:30P
80 Social Sciences Building
CRN 43791

Course Description: If God exists, why is there evil in the world? Does everything really “happen for a reason”? What kind of God allows innocent people to suffer? Why would anybody worship such a God? 

These are central questions for many religious thinkers. We begin with the Bible—the books of Job and Lamentations—to explore how religious traditions have struggled with the problem of suffering and questioned divine justice. Job, who loses his whole family and is stricken with a painful disease, wishes he could put God on trial for persecuting him unfairly. The poets of Lamentations cry out in despair about the horror of war, afraid that the God they had trusted has become their enemy.  We listen to the questioning, anger, and lament at the heart of the Scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. We then learn how these texts are interpreted and rewritten in later times, including modern responses to violence and injustice in a variety of communities in journalism, literature, and film.

Prerequisite: Religious Studies 021 and 023. 

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

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

• TBA
  

---

Religious Studies 130. Hadith Literature, Social Networks, Computational Analysis (4 units)
Mairaj Syed

W 2:10-5:00P
167 Olson Hall
CRN 43904

Course Description: Ḥadīth literature consists of hundreds of thousands of usually short narratives that depict the sayings or acts of the Prophet Muḥammad or other early Islamic religious figures. While most scholars consider the Qurʾān to be a document that was communicated, written down, and preserved in the time of the Prophet Muḥammad himself, the preservation of his sayings and doings in the form of ḥadīth is another matter. Muslims began to systematically collect them, write them down, and preserve them only about a hundred years after his death. The first comprehensive and canonical collections of these ḥadīths started emerging about 150 years after that. For these and other reasons, there has always been a considerable amount of disagreement about how to authenticate and date these narratives. We will study in depth how different scholars, Muslim and non-Muslim, premodern and contemporary, approached this problem in the past 1,000 years.

In the process of the systematic attempt to collect, transcribe, preserve and disseminate ḥadīth, the early Muslims ended up creating a vast and complex social network of individuals that spanned many cities throughout the Middle East and lasted two and half centuries. Because of the sheer number of individuals (thousands) that participated in this network, and the density of information it transmitted and preserved about itself, we can analyze its historical development using techniques used by computer scientists to describe and quantify social networks like Facebook and Twitter. We will learn about these methods and try our hand at applying them, for the first time, to ḥadīth literature.

In order to do this, we will learn some of the basic features of a software package called Mathematica. In addition to applying social network metrics’ to ḥadīth literature, we will also learn a bit about how we can present and visualize data in intuitive and appealing ways.

There are no prerequisites for this class. I do not expect students to have any knowledge either about Islam, ḥadīth, social networking, or the software we will use, Mathematica. If you are curious, want to try your hand at something new, and learn a great deal, I welcome you to take this class!

Prerequisite: None.

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

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

Textbooks:

• TBA
   

---

Religious Studies 131. Genocide (4 units)     [Cross-listed with HMR 131]
Keith Watenpaugh

MW 2:10-4:00P
226 Wellman Hall
CRN 40492

Course Description: Comparative and critical study of the modern phenomenon of genocide from religious, ethical and historical perspectives.

Prerequisite: Upper division standing.

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

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

Textbooks:

• TBA
   

---

Religious Studies 156. Religion and the Performing Arts in India (4 units)
Deepa Mahadevan

MWF 1:10-2:00P
105 Olson Hall
CRN 43935

Course Description: Survey of religion and performing arts in India. Emphasis on the influence of colonialism, nationalism, and regionalism on the history of Indian performing arts.

Prerequisite: Religious Studies 030, 068 or consent of instructor.

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

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbook:

• A course reader
   

---

Religious Studies 175A. Daoist Traditions (4 units)    [Cross-listed with CHN 100A]
Mark Halperin

MW 10:00-11:50A
223 Olson Hall
CRN 44193

Course Description: English-language survey of key Daoist texts and scholarship. Topics include Daoist concepts of the cosmos, the natural world, scripture, the body, and immortality; Daoist divinities; Daoism and the state.

Prerequisite: A course in Chinese history recommended.

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

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours.

Textbooks:

• TBA