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Religious Studies Department
A panel held by the Religious Studies Department at UCSB called on the university to strengthen its efforts to return Native ancestors' remains and cultural objects, highlighting the spiritual and human rights importance of repatriation. Panelists stressed that education and understanding are key to addressing the long-standing harm caused by the desecration of Native burial sites.
Kaitlyn Ugoretz, a UCSB Ph.D. candidate, delves into the evolving practice of Shinto outside Japan, highlighting how sacred spaces are created through rituals rather than geography. Her research explores how Shinto is flourishing in the U.S. among non-Japanese practitioners, driven by global influences like anime and inclusive spiritual values.
Author Amanda J. Baugh talks about the link between environmentalism and Latinx Catholic faith, in her recent book Falling in Love with Nature: The Values of Latinx Catholic Environmentalism. Baugh investigates “la tierra environmentalism,” a widespread ethic of living on earth and protecting one’s environment just as one would their neighbor. She was recently hosted by UCSB’s Walter H. Capps Center.
At an HFA Speaks event “Post-Election Reflection,” three UCSB faculty panelists gathered to discuss the threats America faces in human rights, academic freedom, and democracy under a Trump administration.
Filmmaker and director Persis Karim visited UC Santa Barbara for a screening of her film The Dawn is Too Far, hosted by the Center for Middle East Studies. The film details how art serves as a cultural creative outlet for many Iranian immigrants who moved to America.
UC Santa Barbara’s Walter H. Capps Center hosted a virtual panel last week about the influence of religion in politics and the 2024 election. Panelists were University of Pennsylvania religious studies professor Anthea Butler, North Florida University professor Julie Ingersoll, and UC Santa Barbara professor Joseph Blankholm. The audience heard that Christian nationalists aim to establish a theocratic government, viewing a figure like Donald Trump as a vehicle for gaining political and religious power. Panelists warned of potential violence as these movements see themselves in a battle of good against evil.
UC Riverside religious studies professor Melissa M. Wilcox spoke to a UC Santa Barbara audience last week about her research on the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an international group of drag queens and queer activists. Wilcox was invited by UCSB's Walter H. Capps Center as part of its 60th-anniversary celebrations. Her book, Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody, explores how the Sisters blend drag, activism, and religious imagery to challenge societal norms around gender and morality.
UC Santa Barbara's Walter H. Capps Center hosted Diane Winston, Knight Chair of Media and Religion at the University of Southern California, for a lecture on her book Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan's Evangelical Vision. She spoke about the role religion played in both Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump's presidency and how media helped popularize the politics of the Christian right.
“HFA Speaks: For the Love of Language” brought together Sabine Frühstück, a UCSB professor of modern Japanese cultural studies, Magda Campo, an Arabic continuing lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies, and Laura Marqués-Pascual, the language program director in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese for a panel discussion. Moderated by Jackie Jauregui, the panel had a conversation about the importance of learning languages, and the related struggles of teaching it at a time of dropping enrollment nationally.
Russell M. Jeung, a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University, spoke at UCSB about the racial violence and hate that rose during the COVID-19 era and how that racial trauma has affected the community’s mental health. Jeung said that Asian Americans have been able to grow past these traumas by relying on their Asian identities and using cultural responses.
UCSB Religious Studies professor Janet Afary discussed her book Mollā Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster, 1906-1911 with department colleague Dwight Reynolds as part of the series “Humanities Decanted,” an Interdisciplinary Humanities Center program in which UCSB scholars present their newest works in a relaxed environment. Mollā Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster, 1906-1911, explores the first era of the 20th century Middle Eastern journal Mollā Nasreddin and its use of visual art, folklore, and satire to transmit social democratic ideas in Transcaucasia and Iran.
Christoph Emmrich, an associate professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto, recently spoke to a UCSB audience about the fictional retellings of Dhammawati Guruma’s life as a Buddhist teacher. Emmrich’s talk was hosted by Rory Lindsay, a visiting scholar at the 84000 Buddhist Texts Translation Initiative, a global collaboration housed in UCSB’s Religious Studies department that began in 2021.
Lerone A Martin, Stanford religious studies professor who directs the university’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, recently talked about the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the FBI for half a century. Hoover curated networks and worked with prominent white evangelists to promote and strengthen Christian nationalism. Martin used recently declassified documents to expose the religious culture in the FBI during Hoover’s era, which has had long lansting repercussions.
Professor Fabio Rambelli from UCSB’s Religious Studies and East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies departments, speaks about hosting “The Transcultural Exploratorium: Neuro Music and Japanese Culture” event and how he exposed the UCSB community to traditional Japanese sounds.
Musician and composer Gene Coleman spoke to a UC Santa Barbara audience about his work in Neuro Music. With compositions inspired by the brain’s auditory pathways, Coleman studies music from a neuroaesthetic perspective for creative production.
To celebrate the life and legacy of former U.S. House of Representatives member and UCSB Religious Studies professor Walter Capps a quarter century after his passing, a symposium was hosted by the Walter H. Capps Center. One panel focused on Capps’ ground-breaking Vietnam War class, which opened national discussion that prioritized mental health care for veterans. The session this month brought the insight and healing of that innovative class to a new generation.
UCSB's Religious Studies department hosted a three-day workshop looking into the professional artists and craftspeople responsible for the labor and construction of Buddhist sites in India, Japan, Tibet, and Mongolia. UCSB faculty and visiting lecturers looked into areas such as standard practices and information passed down through generations.
Faculty and students of UC Santa Barbara’s Religious studies kicked-off the academic year with hopes of peace and collaboration in the department and among religious groups worldwide. Department chair Juan Campo urged the campus to focus on efforts to foster peace as students and faculty navigate times of immense violence and suffering on all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Suigetsu, the Japanese term for reflected moon, often appears in Medieval Japanese literature and art. However, there is no consistent understanding for how the term is used metaphorically. UCLA Professor William Bodiford visited UCSB to explore this historical context and interpretation further, where he shared his own findings to do with reflected moons and explored the variance in metaphorical significance in different traditions.
The 2022-2023 web and social media intern team in the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts covered an array of events for the HFA website and social media platforms this year. Meet the faces behind the stories.
