Focus on Race

REL 8.01 Transformative Spiritual Journeys. Contemporary Memoirs of African American Religion (Identical to AAAS 027)

This course presents African Americans who have created religious and spiritual lives amid the variety of possibilities for religious belonging in the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century. By engaging an emerging canon of autobiographies, we will take seriously the writings of theologians, religious laity, spiritual gurus, hip hop philosophers, LGBT clergy, religious minorities, and scholars of religion as foundational for considering contemporary religious authority through popular and/or institutional forms of African American religious leadership. Themes of spiritual formation and religious belonging as a process—healing, self-making, writing, growing up, renouncing, dreaming, and liberating—characterize the religious journeys of the African American writers, thinkers, and leaders whose works we will examine. Each weekly session will also incorporate relevant audiovisual religious media, including online exhibits, documentary films, recorded sermons, tv series, performance art, and music.

REL 67 Religion And Imperialism (Identical to ANTH 12.15)

An examination of the impact of imperial expansion on the religious systems of the conquered. The course will focus primarily on the religious consequences of European expansion in North America and Africa but will also examine Jewish responses to Roman imperialism at the time of Jesus. We shall examine the attempts of traditional religious leaders to explain and control the imperial presence as well as the development of new religious movements that grew out of spiritual crises of conquest. This course will examine various types of prophetic movements and revitalization movements that developed in response to conquest as people sought to preserve their cultural identities in the face of their forced integration into imperial systems. Issues of conversion to religions associated with the conquerors as well as the challenges of secular culture will be discussed. Open to all.

REL 61 Religion and the Civil Rights Movement (Identical to AAAS 22)

This course presents the religious dimensions of civil rights activism in twentieth-century United States history. Students will explore the theologies of African American Protestants, liberal religious thinkers, and adherents to Gandhian philosophy as they waged nonviolent struggle against Jim Crow oppression in the United States. In-class discussions and exercises will examine the religious rhetoric and creative protest strategies of movement activists. Open to all.

REL 1.12 Race and Religion 

Where does the notion of "race" come from? This course considers the role religious source texts and religious ideologies have played in the social construction of racial categories– ideas that have been used to justify slavery, genocide, and colonial conquest for centuries. Through comparative anthropological, historical, literary, and theological readings (addressing Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Native American contexts) we will consider the dynamic interaction of religion with racial constructs, politics, economics, and science. This course will also challenge students to speak and write critically about contemporary racial justice struggles from a religious studies perspective.

REL 17 African Religions of the Americas (Identical to AAAS 83.05)

This class introduces the history and practices of African-derived religious traditions as they have developed in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Black American communities in the United States. These religious systems will be discussed with reference to their mainstream representation (as "voodoo") and analyzed according to the more complex realities of their practitioners' everyday lives. Three themes to be explored in each tradition include 1) gender identity; 2) racial identity and resistance; and 3) aesthetics. Open to all classes.

REL 54 African American Religion and Culture in Jim Crow America (Identical to AAAS 22.10)

Jim Crow segregation in the United States compelled many African American men and women to use their bodies—their hands, feet, and voices—to create sacred scenes, sounds, and spaces to articulate their existence in America. This seminar focuses on religious production to explore African American culture in the post-Civil War era. Students will analyze a variety of sources, including music, visual art, film, religious architecture, sermons, food, theater, photography, and news media. 

REL 1.12 Race and Religion

Where does the notion of "race" come from? This course considers the role religious source texts and religious ideologies have played in the social construction of racial categories– ideas that have been used to justify slavery, genocide, and colonial conquest for centuries. Through comparative anthropological, historical, literary, and theological readings (addressing Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Native American contexts) we will consider the dynamic interaction of religion with racial constructs, politics, economics, and science. This course will also challenge students to speak and write critically about contemporary racial justice struggles from a religious studies perspective.