RELIGN 55Spirit of Medicine
Religion, Study of · 5 units · Undergraduate lower division (0-99)
Examination of relationship between medicine, religion, and society; how religion is help or hindrance to health; and what health care might look like beyond biomedical clinic. Examination of historical entwinement of religion, medicine, and society in Western antiquity to early modern period; disentanglement in Enlightenment to early 20th century; and confluence of science, technology, and capitalism in biomedicine compartmentalized from religion today. Conceptualization of rhetorics and epistemologies of healing—what it means to be healed and how one would know—and put in tension with faith healings and religion-as-medicine, medicine-as-religion, and integrated approaches. Analysis of alternatives to biomedical status quo in theoretical medicine and in health care delivery, with particular attention to questions of justice and holistic care in U.S. and of policy and practice globally.
P/NP or letter grading.
When it runs
- Fall 2025
- Fall 2026
Scheduled, not typical — from UCLA’s Schedule of Classes, which publishes Fall 2025 through Spring 2027 and nothing before it.
Requisites
UCLA lists no requisites for this course.
Requires
Everything that has to come before this course, not just the courses named in the requisite above.
Nothing — this is an entry point.
Unlocks
What this course is a requisite for, and what those courses lead to in turn.
No course in the catalog lists this as a requisite.