UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES

150 Humanities Instructional Building; (949) 824-8119

Courses

Core Faculty

Marc David Baer, Ph.D. University of Chicago, Assistant Professor of History (Islamic and Middle Eastern history; Ottoman Empire and Turkey; religious conversion, crypto-religion)

Carol Burke, Ph.D. Maryland University, Professor of English (folk belief, folklore; creative non-fiction)

James T. Chiampi, Ph.D. Yale University, Professor of Italian (Dante and Italian Renaissance)

Susan Bibler Coutin, Ph.D. Stanford University, Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Society (immigration and border issues; law; Central America; political and religious activism; human rights)

Lara Deeb, Ph.D. Emory University, Assistant Professor of Women's Studies (Islam, gender, and notions of modernity; religious social movements; gender and the social sphere)

James B. Given, Ph.D. Stanford University, Professor of History (medieval Europe; social and political history)

Michelle Hamilton, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, Assistant Professor of Spanish (medieval Spanish literature)

Lamar M. Hill, Ph.D. University of London, Professor of History (Tudor-Stuart England; early modern Europe)

Bonnie Kent, Ph.D. Columbia University, Professor of Philosophy (ethics; medieval philosophy and theology; philosophy of religion)

Susan B. Klein, Ph.D. Cornell University, Associate Professor of Japanese (premodern and modern theater and dance; medieval commentaries; Japanese religions; new historicism and feminist critical theory)

Karen Leonard, Ph.D. University of Wisconsin, Director of the Center for Asian Studies and Professor of Anthropology (social history of India; caste ethnicity and gender; Asian-Americans in the United States)

Mark A. LeVine, Ph.D. New York University, Professor of History (modern Middle East and Islam; globalization; popular culture)

Julia Reinhard Lupton, Ph.D. Yale University, Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Education (Shakespeare; Renaissance literature; religious studies; Jewish studies; humanities and the public sphere)

Steven Mailloux, Ph.D., University of Southern California, UCI Chancellor's Professor of Rhetoric (American literature; contemporary theory; cultural studies and criticism; history and theories of rhetoric)

Keith L. Nelson, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, Professor Emeritus of History (American foreign relations; Soviet-American relations; war and society)

Daniel Schroeter, Ph.D. University of Manchester, Director of the Jewish Studies Minor, Professor of History, and Teller Family Chair in Jewish History (Jewish history, Middle East and North Africa)

Victoria Silver, Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles, Associate Professor of English (Renaissance studies; feminist and gender studies; cultural studies and criticism; history of literary theory; histories and theories of rhetoric)

Affiliated Faculty

Elizabeth Allen, Ph.D. University of Michigan, Associate Professor of English (medieval literature; theories of reception; exemplary and didactic literature; literature and ethics; literature and affect; history of English language; Old English)

Linda Freeman Bauer, Ph.D. Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, Professor of Art History (Renaissance and Baroque art)

Victoria Bernal, Ph.D. Northwestern University, Associate Professor of Anthropology (feminist theory and gender; civil society, globalization, cyberspace, transnationalism; the Islamic revival; peasants, labor migration; Africa, Muslim societies)

Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, Professor of History (American culture; African American history of the South)

Yong Chen, Ph.D. Cornell University, Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies (Asian-American history; late-nineteenth and twentieth-century American social and cultural history; immigration history)

Chungmoo Choi, Ph.D. Indiana University, Associate Professor of Korean Culture (Modern Korea; postcolonial and colonial discourse; Marxism and Christianity; popular cultures and anthropology)

Edward Fowler, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, Department Chair of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Professor of Japanese (Modern literature; cultural studies; film)

Michael A. Fuller, Ph.D. Yale University, Associate Professor of Chinese (Classical Chinese poetry and poetics; the cultural and intellectual contexts for poetry; aesthetic theory; linguistic issues in classical Chinese)

Alexander Gelley, Ph.D. Yale University, Professor of Comparative Literature (eighteenth-century English and comparative literature; nineteenth-century English and comparative literature and philosophy; German-Jewish literature and culture)

Linda Georgianna, Ph.D. Columbia University, Professor of English (medieval literature and culture; nineteenth-century medievalism)

Anna Gonosová, Ph.D. Harvard University, Associate Professor of Art History (Byzantine and Medieval art and architecture)

Judy C. Ho, Ph.D. Yale University, Associate Professor of Art History (Chinese art and archaeology; Buddhist art and popular religions)

S. Nicholas Jolley, Ph.D Cambridge University, Professor of Philosophy (seventeenth and eighteenth-century philosophy; political philosophy)

Richard W. F. Kroll, Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles, Professor of English (eighteenth-century English and comparative literature; history of literary theory; literature and philosophy; cultural studies and criticism; history and theories of rhetoric)

Jayne Lewis, Ph.D. Princeton University, Professor of English (Restoration/eighteenth-century British literature; natural philosophy and the supernatural; early modern meteorology, historical fiction)

Cecilia Lynch, Ph.D. Columbia University, Director of the Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies and Associate Professor of Political Science (international relations theory; international organization and law; international ethics and political philosophy; social movements in world politics; peace and security)

Sanjoy Mazumdar, Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor of Planning, Policy, and Design and of Environmental Health, Science, and Policy (environmental design research: cultural aspects, environmental psychology; architecture, planning, organizational studies; work environments, home environments, ethnic neighborhoods)

Michael T. McBride, Ph.D. Yale University, Assistant Professor of Economics (game theory; economics of religion; political economy of development; social networks; experimental economics)

Margaret M. Miles, Ph.D. Princeton University, Professor of Art History and Classics (Greek and Roman art, architecture and archaeology)

J. Michelle Molina, Ph.D. University of Chicago, Assistant Professor of History (Colonial Latin America; global religious networks; Jesuits; comparative colonialism)

Alan Nelson, Ph.D. University of Illinois at Chicago, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy (early modern rationalism and empiricism; philosophy and history of science; history of analytic philosophy)

Maria C. Pantelia, Ph.D. Ohio State University, Department Chair and Professor of Classics and Director, Thesaurus Linguae Graecae^® (Greek epic poetry, Hellenistic poetry, computer applications to Classics)

Kenneth L. Pomeranz, Ph.D. Yale University, UCI Chancellor's Professor of History and of East Asian Languages and Literatures (Modern China; origins of world economy; global context of environmental change; peasant protest and collective violence; popular religions)

Jen'nan Read, Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin, Assistant Professor of Sociology (gender, ethnicity, religion, and health; Arab Americans, U.S. Muslims)

Gary Richardson, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, Associate Professor of Economics (medieval economy and religion; economics and immigration; banking and the Great Depression)

Michael Ryan, Ph.D. University of Iowa, Professor of English and Creative Writing (American literature; creative writing; poetry, poetics; autobiography)

Thomas P. Saine, Ph.D Yale University, Professor Emeritus of German (eighteenth-century German literature; Goethe; Germany and the French Revolution; eighteenth-century popular philosophy and theology)

Martin Schwab, Ph.D. University of Bielefeld, Director of the Minor in Humanities and Law and Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature (nineteenth and twentieth-century continental philosophy; literature and other arts, literature and philosophy)

John H. Smith, Ph.D. Princeton University, Director of the Critical Theory Institute, Department Chair and Professor of German, and Professor of Comparative Literature (eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and intellectual history; literary theory)

Daniel Stokols, Ph.D. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Professor of Planning, Policy, and Design; Psychology and Social Behavior; and Environmental Health, Science, and Policy (theory development in environmental psychology and social ecology; environmental design research; community and worksite health promotion; effects of environmental stressors on behavior and health; environmental psychology of the Internet)

Ulrike Strasser, Ph.D. University of Minnesota, Associate Professor of History (Early Modern Europe and Germany; comparative women's history; social and cultural history)

Timothy Tackett, Ph.D. Stanford University, Professor of History (The Old Regime and the French Revolution; social, religious, and cultural history; violence and terror)

Roxanne Varzi, Ph.D. Columbia University, Assistant Professor of Anthropology (Islam; Shiism; mysticism; modernity; the production of public culture, particularly war and youth culture; media studies)

Roger N. Walsh, M.B.B.S., Ph.D. University of Queensland (Australia), Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior (Asian psychologies, philosophies, and religions; ecology; meditation; exceptional psychological well-being; post-conventional development; transpersonal psychology)

Religious Studies includes an interdisciplinary major and minor that focus on the comparative understanding of the various ways different peoples, across space and through time, have developed their religious ideas, values, systems, beliefs, rituals, and traditions in response to fundamental questions of human existence. The curriculum seeks to provide a wide-ranging academic understanding and knowledge of the religious experience in society through study in the Schools of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Social Ecology, and the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. As an interdisciplinary academic discipline, the study of religion offers a rigorous, systematic, and dispassionate intellectual inquiry into various aspects of religious systems, their practitioners and outlooks, and their goals and expressions. It employs a wide variety of approaches and methods in order to understand the role of religion in both human experience and thought.

Students in the Religious Studies major complete an emphasis in either Judaism/Christianity/Islam or in World Religious Traditions.

CAREERS FOR THE RELIGIOUS STUDIES MAJOR

Majoring in Religious Studies is an excellent preparation for living in a multicultural society and for a variety of careers in counseling, teaching, commerce, writing, government, the arts, and professional religious leadership. The major's emphasis on broad understanding, critical thinking skills, and clear written expression provides an effective springboard for graduate study in the humanities and social science or professional schools in medicine, law, or business.

The UCI Career Center provides services to students and alumni including career counseling, information about job opportunities, a career library, and workshops on resume preparation, job search, and interview techniques. See the Career Center section for additional information.

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE BACHELOR'S DEGREE

University Requirements: See pages 57-62.