The Study of Religion Ph.D. program is designed as a 6-year program. Students gain advanced knowledge of the literatures of particular religious traditions and the intersections of these with contemporary thematic and regional phenomena including values, ethics and human rights, modernity, science and secularism, visual culture, media and technology, language, rhetoric and performance, body and praxis, and theory and method. Students graduate with the qualitative and quantitative skills necessary for professional research and teaching in religious studies. Graduate students in our program receive two kinds of training: classical research in the corpus of a particular religious tradition, and theoretical training to place this tradition at the center of broader concerns, in contemporary and regional context. We offer distinctive research strengths in three regions: American religious cultures, ancient Mediterranean religions, and Asian religions. A second regional specialization gives students an in-depth comparative basis. Students focus their scholarship through one of the following thematic lenses: Values, Ethics, and Human Rights, Modernity, Science, and Secularism, Visual Culture, Media and Technology, Language, Rhetoric, and Performance, Body and Praxis, Theory and Method. This curriculum provides the depth to produce rigorous scholarship that is on the cutting edge, redefining what religious studies has to say to the academy and public.
The DE in Critical Theory at UC Davis provides doctoral students a double opportunity: to participate in interdisciplinary seminars focusing on the rich tradition of critical thought, both ancient and modern, and to add a formal credential in critical theory to their degrees. Our faculty, drawn from various affiliated programs in the humanities and social sciences, offer a wide range of expertise across multiple historical periods and theoretical approaches. Our seminars bring together students and faculty from across this broad disciplinary spectrum, providing a rare opportunity to compare perspectives, and to interrogate the fundamental axioms and principles of social, political and cultural practice.
