CATHOLIC STUDIES SERIES
Upper Division Undergraduate Level

RG ST 138A: Church, State, and the Construction of Orthodoxy – A survey of the emergence and development of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution with particular attention to the ways in which church leaders defined, maintained, and transmitted a distinctively Catholic understanding of Christian orthodoxy.

RG ST 138B: Catholic Practices & Global Cultures – An examination of the ways in which Catholic spirituality and religious practice have been shaped historically by the encounter with various cultures and traditions, e.g., classical Greek, Old Saxon (German), Chinese, Nahua (Mexican), Cuban, Central African, and South Asian.

RG ST 138C: Catholicism and Modernity – An examination of the intellectual life of the church with particular attention to the challenges posed by historical, scientific, and comparative approaches to the study of religion during the last two centuries.

RG ST 138D: Catholicism and U. S. History - An examination of the emergence and development of Catholicism in the U.S. and its impact on the cultural, political, and social life of U.S. from a transnational and comparative perspective.

Lower Division Electives:

RG ST 15: Religion and Psychology – A survey of theories and approaches to the study of religion from the perspective of psychology, with an emphasis on new theories arising from evolutionary and cognitive psychology.

Graduate Electives:

RG ST 238: Seminar in Catholic Studies (General Description): An examination of selected topics in Catholic Studies with particular attention to theory and methods that relate the study of Catholicism to larger questions in religious studies, American history, and global studies.

Winter 2006: MARIAN APPARITIONS. The seminar focused on scholarly treatments of visionary experiences – mostly Marian apparitions -- in the modern era in Europe and the Americas.

Winter 2007: PERSPECTIVES ON CATHOLICISM IN THE U.S. The seminar read and critiqued leading general histories of “American Catholicism” in relation to U.S. religious history and the history of Catholicism more generally and then considered a number of monographs that offer alternative perspectives on or approaches to Catholicism in the U.S.

Winter 2008: THE CONSTRUCTION OF MYSTICISM (tentative).

Winter 2009: CONVERTS AND CONVERSION (tentative).

Department of Religious Studies | University of California | Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3130
telephone: (805) 893-7136 | fax: (805) 893-2059 | http://www.religion.ucsb.edu