Fall 2016
Winter 2017 Schedule
Spring 2017 Schedule
REL 210C - Religion without a Book: Cult Practice in Ancient Greece and Rome (Also counts for a REL 230D requirement)
Prof. Lynn Roller
Thursdays, 2:10-5:00pm
922 Sproul Hall
CRN 92135
How do polytheistic religious systems address the challenges of communicating with a deity, maintaining justice and order, and explaining death and the afterlife without a set of spiritual texts to guide them? This seminar will consider how the cult rituals of ancient Greeks and Romans provided meaning and order to people’s lives. Topics include religion and civic life, mystery cults, and women and the household. The major emphasis will be on the ancient Mediterranean world, but the seminar welcomes anyone interested in exploring the shared characteristics of global religious traditions defined through actions, not words.
Open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students Questions? contact leroller@ucdavis.edu
REL 230D - Breaking Bad: Rabbinic and Psychoanalytic Theories of the Pathology
Prof. Naomi Janowitz
Tuesdays, 6:10-9:00pm
144 Olson Hall
CRN 91112
This course will examine the long shadows of rabbinic and psychoanalytic concepts of pathology especially as they continue to stimulate modern analysis of culture and behavior. Rabbinic notions of self and body present a stunning example of how religious discourse structures and classifies human behavior as problematic. Psychoanalytic theory offers another complex model, with fine-tuned ideas about the origins and purpose of pathological behavior. Two recent studies of rabbinic thought redefine the classic religious concepts of purity/impurity, self/body and fake/genuine. Both studies map the influence of this thought onto modern modes of thinking found in academic theory. Psychoanalytic concepts of pathology continue to assert a profound influence on theories of pathology/mental health.