SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES

RELIGIOUS STUDIES

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.

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.

- From the 2007-2008 UCI General Catalogue