Media Source List on Religion ----------------------------------------------------------- * Psychology of religion * Church-state relations * The Bible and place-based religion/spirituality * Religious social movements * Spiritually based political groups * The Black Church experience * Asian immigration and folk spirituality * Muslims in India, Pakistan and the West * European art history and religion * Eastern religion and philosophy * Mayan religions and spirituality * Indigenous cultural/religious dance traditions * The Reformation and the Bible * African religions * Anthropology of African religions * Jewish identities at the margins * Aboriginal myth, time and language ----------------------------------------------------------- The UC Davis faculty has a broad expertise across a variety of religious and spiritual topics. Some of these sources may be particularly useful to reporters in the upcoming religious season. If you need information on a topic not listed, please contact Susanne Rockwell at the UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-9841, sgrockwell@ucdavis.edu. PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION -- Psychology professor Robert Emmons' research is at the interface of personality, psychology and religion. He focuses on how religiousness and spirituality reflect core aspects of the self and identity, and how these aspects of the self are involved in well-being and personality coherence and integration over time. He also researches the psychology of gratitude. Emmons is an associate editor for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of the Psychology of Religion, and a member of the American Psychological Association. He is the author of "The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns: Motivation and Spirituality in Personality." Contact: Robert Emmons, Psychology, (530) 752-8844, raemmons@ucdavis.edu. CHURCH-STATE RELATIONS -- Alan Brownstein, professor of law, writes and works in the area of church-state relations. He has written numerous articles on the religion clauses of the First Amendment, frequently lectures in this area to civic groups and has testified on related legislation before California legislative committees. Brownstein is on the board of the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California and the Sacramento Jewish Community Relations Council. He advises the California Interfaith Coalition for the Free Exercise of Religion on constitutional matters. Contact: Alan Brownstein, School of Law, (530) 752-2586, aebrownstein@ucdavis.edu. THE BIBLE AND PLACE-BASED RELIGION/SPIRITUALITY -- English professor David Robertson teaches and studies place-based religion and spirituality and the Bible as literature. He has written a basic introduction to reading the Bible as a piece of literature ("The Old Testament and the Literary Critic") and regularly teaches courses on this subject. He is also interested in religion and the natural world and, in particular, in spiritual movements that assert the oneness of matter and spirit and the equivalence of universe and local place. His book, "Real Matter," deals with this theme as it relates to a number of West Coast writers. Contact: David Robertson, English, (530) 752-0698, darobertson@ucdavis.edu. RELIGIOUS SOCIAL MOVEMENTS -- John R. Hall, professor of sociology and an affiliated professor of the Religious Studies Program, researches and writes about religious social movements. In recent years, he has concentrated on the study of violence involving movements such as the People's Temple at Jonestown, the Branch Davidians at Waco and Aum Shinrikyo in Japan. His books on the subject include "Gone From the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History" (1987) and "Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe and Japan" (2000), co-authored by Philip D. Schuyler and Sylvaine Trinh. Contact: John Hall, Sociology, (530) 752-7035, jrhall@ucdavis.edu. SPIRITUALLY BASED POLITICAL GROUPS -- Judith Newton, professor and director of women and gender studies, researches and writes about the Promise Keepers and about spiritually based political groups such as The Call to Renewal and the Politics of Meaning. Contact: Judith Newton, Women and Gender Studies, (530) 756-3604 (home), jlnewton@ucdavis.edu. THE BLACK CHURCH EXPERIENCE -- Milmon F. Harrison, an assistant professor of African American and African studies, is a sociologist who looks at the various roles and meanings of Christianity and the black church in the African American experience. He just finished a book about the Word of Faith movement, a contemporary charismatic, Christian movement gaining popularity among African Americans. Its doctrine (sometimes referred to as the "prosperity gospel") teaches followers that they can not only expect to go to heaven but also have perfect health and material wealth in their present life. Contact: Milmon Harrison, African American and African Studies, (530) 752-1548, mfharrison@ucdavis.edu. ASIAN IMMIGRATION AND FOLK SPIRITUALITY -- Historian Steffi San Buenaventura, professor of Asian American studies, is a pioneering scholar in the field of Asian American socio-religious movements. Her work on Filipino folk spirituality and immigration has been published in "New Spiritual Homes: Religion and Asian Americans" (1999). She has also written a book about a Filipino American socio-religious movement in California and Hawaii, "From Below and From Within: Nativism, Ethnicity and Empowerment in a Filipino American Experience, 1925-1995." San Buenaventura's research also includes studying Filipino immigrant Catholics and Protestants in historical and contemporary settings. Contact: Steffi San Buenaventura, Asian American Studies, (530) 752-2356, steffi@ucdavis.edu. MUSLIMS IN INDIAN, PAKISTAN AND THE WEST -- Barbara Metcalf, professor of history, specializes in the study of Islamic reform movements in the 19th and 20th centuries and in the history of the large Muslim populations of South Asia generally. Her edited volume, "Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe" (1996), dealt with the experience of Indo-Pakistani and other Muslim immigrants to the West. Her current research focuses on a transnational pietist movement called Tablighi Jamaat. Contact: Barbara Metcalf, History, (510) 642-1610 (office) and (510) 526-3683 (home), bdmetcalf@ucdavis.edu. EUROPEAN ART HISTORY AND RELIGION -- Jeffrey Ruda, professor of art history, writes and teaches about art as an expression of belief systems in Renaissance Italy and 17th-century Europe, with some carryover to contemporary issues including lesbian and gay studies. His book, "Fra Filippo Lippi: Life and Work, with a Complete Catalogue," was published by Phaidon Press, London, in 1993. Contact: Jeffrey Ruda, Art and Art History, (530) 752-0425, jhruda@ucdavis.edu. EASTERN RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY -- Whalen Lai, professor of religious studies, focuses on Eastern religious traditions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Gnosticism and Confucianism. He also is a scholar of Chinese philosophy and myth and of the Christian/Buddhist dialogue. Among his many publications are 12 entries in the Encyclopedia of Monasticism that engage in a Buddhist/Christian monastic comparison. He also has written about Buddhist ethics in the absence of a civil religion, examining the concept of civil society in the West and its applicability for China. Contact: Whalen Lai, Religious Studies, (530) 752-6002, ewlai@aol.com. MAYAN RELIGIONS AND SPIRITUALITY -- Victor Montejo, associate professor of Native American studies, is an anthropologist who studies indigenous religions and spirituality. He has focused on the sacred myths of creation of the Mayas and the current ecological and spiritual beliefs among Jakaltek Mayas in Guatemala. His current book, "The Road to Heaven: Jakaltek Maya Beliefs, Religion and the Ecology," deals with indigenous myths, moral values and respectful attitudes toward nature, humans and the supernatural world. Montejo is the author of the 1999 illustrated version for young readers of the "Popol Vuh, the Sacred Book of the Mayas." Contact: Victor Montejo, Native American Studies, (530) 754-6128, vmontejo@ucdavis.edu. INDIGENOUS CULTURAL/RELIGIOUS DANCE TRADITION -- Inés Hernández-Avila, associate professor of Native American studies, researches and writes about the Conchero dance tradition of Mexico City. Hernández-Avila's project demontrates how this cultural/religious tradition has sustained itself and influenced, in varying degrees, the elaboration of a Chicana/o indigenous consciousness via the more popularly known and practiced Aztec dance tradition. Hernández-Avila's personal participation in this tradition for more than 20 years allows for an autoethnographic component to the study as well. Contact: Inés Hernández-Avila, (530) 752-4394, ighernandez@ucdavis.edu. THE REFORMATION AND THE BIBLE -- Peter Schaeffer, a professor of German affiliated with classics and religious studies, teaches about Reformation history and polemics, pagan Rome/Christian Rome, the Greek and Latin Bibles, and the beginnings of the English Bible, among other subjects. His publications include the biographies of Joannes Sapidus (a pioneer in Protestant higher education in Strasbourg) and Joachim Vadianus (the reformer of St. Gallen) in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. Contact: Peter Schaeffer, German, (530) 752-0730, pmschaeffer@ucdavis.edu. AFRICAN RELIGIONS -- Jacob Olupona, director and professor of African American and African studies and affiliated with the Religious Studies Program, teaches and studies religions of the sub-Saharan Africans and the African diaspora. He specializes in Yoruba thought and culture in southwestern Nigeria. He currently works on a Ford Foundation-sponsored project on African Immigrant Religious Communities in America. He has authored and edited more than eight books including "Kingship, Religion and Rituals in a Nigerian Community." He is the president of the African Association for the Study of Religion. Contact: Jacob Olupona, African American and African Studies, (530) 752-4999, jkolupona@ucdavis.edu. ANTHROPOLOGY OF AFRICAN RELIGIONS -- Richard Curley, a senior lecturer in anthropology, is interested in the anthropology of religions with a special interest in African societies and in religious changes taking place there. He has worked in Uganda, where he studied shamans and the role they play in curing people. He also studied an independent Christian church in Cameroon and its relation to changing economic and political conditions. His research in Africa has led him into the study of ritual and religious movements. He is now preparing to do research on the spread of evangelical religions in Uganda. Contact: Richard Curley, Anthropology, (530) 752-2660, rtcurley@ucdavis.edu. JEWISH IDENTITIES AT THE MARGINS -- Bruce Rosenstock, lecturer in religious studies and classics, writes about Jewish figures who have departed from the traditional patterns of Jewish life. These figures have adopted alternative ways to express their Jewish identity: converted Jews in 15th-century Spain who become church leaders, and messianic, mystical Jews in the 17th century who joined the Sabbatian movement. Rosenstock is also directing (with Spanish professor Samuel Armistead) the digital library project, Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews, http://flsj.ucdavis.edu, funded by the National Science Foundation and the Maurice Amado Foundation. Contact: Bruce Rosenstock, Religious Studies, (530) 754-8323, bbrosenstock@ucdavis.edu. ABORIGINAL MYTH, TIME AND LANGUAGE -- Aram A. Yengoyan, professor of anthropology, writes and teaches on the importance of myth among Aboriginal Australian cultures. Basically, myth as expressed through epics and legends is the link from the most ancient past to the present. In his work he shows how different language structures (either through tense or aspect) connect myth as a critical and active force in everyday realities among the Pitjantjatjara in Australia. He has published extensively on the theoretical and ethnographic implications. Contact: Aram A. Yengoyan, Anthropology, (530) 752-2849, aayengoyan@ucdavis.edu.