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Listed in: Religion, as RELI-132
William Girard (Section 01)
In this course, we will consider the complex intersection of race and religion in the Americas from the first encounters between Europeans and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas up through the contemporary moment. The course will first examine how the categories of “race” and “religion” themselves were continually produced and remade over these centuries. We will track how interwoven racial and religious hierarchies were forged through material and imagined relations between the Americas and the “Old World” as well as through connections across the Western Hemisphere. The latter portion of the course will take up a series of recent ethnographies as we investigate the contemporary imbrications of race and religion in North and South America. Topics through which we will explore the intersection of race and religion include: The Black Legend, colonialism, slavery, The “one drop rule,” mestizaje, rebellions and revolutions, nationalism, Liberation Theology, the Civil Rights Movement, immigration, and popular media, among others.
Fall semester. Visiting Lecturer Girard.