Courses
Arts and Letters
Religious Studies (REL)
- REL-R 152 Jews, Christians, Muslims (3 cr.) Patterns of religious life and thought in the West; continuities, changes, and contemporary issues.
- REL-R 153 Religions of Asia (3 cr.) Introduction to the religious traditions of Asia as integral to culture and society. Examines sacred stories, beliefs, values, and practices from multiple Asian religions in historical and comparative perspectives. Reveals how concepts of how the world works and what it means to be human vary across time and place, influencing domains not conventionally deemed religious in the U.S.
- REL-R 160 Religion and American Culture (3 cr.) Traditional patterns of encounter with the sacred. Secularization of Western culture. Religious elements in contemporary American culture.
- REL-R 170 Religion, Ethics, and Public Life (3 cr.) Western religious convictions and their consequences for judgments about personal and social morality, including such issues as sexual morality, medical ethics, questions of socioeconomic organization, and moral judgments about warfare.
- REL-R 180 Introduction to Christianity (3 cr.) Survey of beliefs, rituals, and practices of the Christian community with a focus on the varieties of scriptural interpretation, historical experience, doctrine, and behavior.
- REL-R 200 Studies in Religion (3 cr.) Select intermediate studies in religion. Interdisciplinary studies emphasized. Repeatable for credit up to 9 units, if topics differ.
- REL-R 210 Introduction to Old Testament/Hebrew Bible (3 cr.) Development of its beliefs, practices, and institutions from the Patriarchs to the Maccabean period. Introduction to the Biblical literature and other ancient Near East documents.
- REL-R 220 Introduction to New Testament (3 cr.) Origins of the Christian movement and development of its beliefs, practices, and institutions in the first century. Primary source is the New Testament, with due attention to non-Christian sources from the same environment.
- REL-R 245 Introduction to Judaism (3 cr.) The development of post-Biblical Judaism: major themes, movements, practices, and values.
- REL-R 257 Introduction to Islam (3 cr.) Introduction to the "religious world" of Islam: the Arabian milieu before Muhammad's prophetic call, the career of the Prophet. Quran and hadith, ritual and the "pillars" of Muslim praxis, legal and theological traditions, mysticism and devotional piety, reform and revivalist movements.
- REL-R 280 Speaking of God (3 cr.) Theology, as the study of the first principle, ground of being, the good, the One, etc., as appearing in various traditions.
- REL-R 327 Christianity 50-450 (3 cr.) The emergence of Christianity as a distinct religion in the Roman empire through the fifth century: development of offices and rituals; persecution and martyrdom; Constantine and Catholic orthodoxy; monasticism; major thinkers and theological controversies; the transition to the Middle Ages.
- REL-R 331 Christianity, 1500-2000 (3 cr.) Major figures and movements in the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and modern periods.
- REL-R 335 Religion in the United States, 1600-1850 (3 cr.) Development of religious life and thought in early America, from the beginnings to 1850.
- REL-R 336 Religion in the United States, 1850-Present. (3 cr.) Development of religious life and thought in modern America, from 1850 to the present.
- REL-R 345 Religious Issues in Contemporary Judaism (3 cr.) Religious problems confronting Jews and Judaism in our own time: women and Judaism, the impact of the Holocaust on Judaism, contemporary views of Zionism, religious trends in American Judaism. Repeatable for credit up to 12 units, if topics differ.
- REL-R 354 Buddhism (3 cr.) Historical survey of Buddhism from its origins in India through its diffusion throughout Asia in subsequent centuries. Emphasis on practice (ritual, meditation, and ethics) and social grounding (including individual roles and institutional structures) as well as on doctrinal debates.
- REL-R 358 Introduction to Hinduism (3 cr.) Beliefs, rites, and institutions of Hinduism from the Vedic (c. 1200 B.C.) to modern times: religion of the Vedas and the Upanishads; epics and the rise of devotional religion; philosophical systems (Yoga and Vedanta); sectarian theism; monasticism; socioreligious institutions; popular religion (temples and pilgrimages); modern Hindu syncretism.
- REL-R 362 Religion in Literature (3 cr.) Theological issues raised in literature. Function of religious myth and central religious themes, such as damnation, alienation, pilgrimage, quest, conversion, enlightenment. May be repeated once for credit with a different topic.
- REL-R 364 Topics in Gender and Western Religion. (3 cr.) Basis for and substance of the feminist critique of Western religions. Examines feminist arguments with religious texts, traditions, patterns of worship, expressions of religious language, and modes of organization. Examination of alternatives.
- REL-R 371 Religion, Ethics, and the Environment (3 cr.) Exploration of relationships between religious world views and environmental ethics. Considers environmental critiques/defenses of monotheistic traditions; selected non-Western traditions, the impact of secular "mythologies," philosophical questions, and lifestyle issues.
