Manvir Singh (Department of Anthropology)

What are the origins of shamanism, and what is its future? Do shamans believe in their powers? What exactly is trance? What can we learn from indigenous healing practices? 

Traveling from Indonesia to the Colombian Amazon, living with shamans and observing music, drug use and indigenous curing ceremonies, anthropologist and Assistant Professor Manvir Singh journeys into one of the most mysterious religious traditions. In Shamanism: The Timeless Religion (Penguin Random House, 2025), Singh shows that shamanic traditions will forever re-emerge — and that by contemplating humanity’s oldest spiritual practice, we come to better understand ourselves, our history and our future.

Michael Dylan Foster (East Asian Languages and Cultures)

Monsters, spirits, fantastic beings and supernatural creatures haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan. Broadly labeled yōkai, they appear in many forms, from tengu mountain goblins and kappa water sprites, to shape-shifting kitsune foxes and long-tongued ceiling-lickers. Popular today in anime, manga, film and video games, many yōkai originated in local legends, folktales and regional ghost stories.

In The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore (University of California Press, 2024), Professor of Japanese Michael Dylan Foster invites readers to examine how people create, transmit and collect folklore, and how they make sense of the mysteries in the world around them.

John T Scott (Department of Political Science)

In Rousseau’s God: Theology, Religion, and the Natural Goodness of Man (The University of Chicago Press, 2023), Distinguished Professor John T. Scott offers a comprehensive interpretation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s theological and religious thought, both in its own right and in relation to Rousseau’s broader oeuvre. 

Scott reveals recurrent themes in Rousseau’s views on the subject and traces their evolution over time. He shows that truth and utility are integral to Rousseau’s writings on religion, which helps to explain some of Rousseau’s disagreements with his contemporaries: their different views on religion and theology stem from different understandings of human nature and the proper role of science in human life. Rousseau emphasizes not just what is true, but also what is useful — psychologically, morally and politically — for human beings.

Brenda Deen Schildgen (Department of Comparative Literature)

Dante and Violence: Domestic, Civic, Cosmic (University of Notre Dame Press, 2021), by Distinguished Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature Brenda Deen Schildgen, is an examination of violence in the domestic, communal and cosmic spheres in Dante Alighieri's literary works. 

Primarily focused on Dante’s representation of his contemporary reality, it demonstrates that the punishments and rewards in Dante’s heaven and hell may be a direct appeal to his readers to recognize the crimes that pervade their world.

Bruce D. Haynes (Department of Sociology) 

In The Soul of Judaism (NYU Press, August 2018), Professor Emeritus Bruce D. Haynes explores the full diversity of Jews of African descent in America, putting to rest the simplistic notion that Jews are white and that Black Jews are therefore a contradiction.

This book demonstrates that racial ascription has been shaping Jewish selfhood for centuries. Pushing us to reassess the boundaries between race and ethnicity, it offers insight into how Black Jewish individuals strive to assert their dual identities and find acceptance within their respective communities.

Mairaj Syed (Department of Religion, Culture and Society)

In Coercion and Responsibility in Islam: A Study in Ethics and Law (Oxford University Press, 2017) Associate Professor Mairaj Syed explores how classical Muslim theologians and jurists from four intellectual traditions argue about the thorny issues that coercion raises about responsibility for one's action.

The book compares classical Muslim thought on coercion with that of modern Western thinkers on these issues and finds significant parallels between them. The finding suggests that a fruitful starting point for comparative ethical inquiry, especially inquiry aimed at the discovery of common ground for ethical action, may be found in an examination of how ethicists from different traditions considered concrete problems.

Louis Warren (History Department)

In God’s Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America (Basic Books, 2017), Louis Warren, historian and W. Turrentine Jackson Distinguished Professor of U.S. Western History, offers a startling new view of the religion known as the Ghost Dance. 

The text powerfully reveals how Ghost Dance teachings helped Native Americans retain their identity and reshape the modern world while they sought to thrive in modern America by working for wages, farming the land and educating their children. Yet, to this day, the Ghost Dance remains widely mischaracterized as a primitive and failed effort by Indian militants to resist American conquest and return to traditional ways.

 David Biale (History Department), David Assaf, Benjamin Brown, Uriel Gellman, Samuel Heilman, Moshe Rosma, Gadi Sagiv, and Marcin Wodziński 

Written by an international team of scholars, including the late-David Biale, former Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor of Jewish History, Hasidism: A New History (Princeton University Press, 2017) is the first comprehensive history of Hasidism and a must-read for anyone seeking to understand this influential modern Jewish movement.

The book’s unique blend of intellectual, religious, and social history offers perspectives on the movement’s leaders as well as its followers, and demonstrates that, far from being a throwback to the Middle Ages, Hasidism is a product of modernity that forged its identity as a radical alternative to the secular world.

In the Integrative Anthropology Lab at UC Davis, Manvir Singh combines evolutionary, cognitive and sociocultural methods and theory to tease apart the origins of human behavior and societies. 

The Department of Religion, Culture and Society in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis is now accepting graduate applications for the 2026-2027 academic year. The admitted scholars will be the first cohort in the newly announced master’s program.