REL 174 RELIGION AND POWER

This course challenges students to think about “religion” as something extending beyond the walls of churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples. Instead, this course asks how religion and social power can overlap, blend into, and alter one another. Can religion prompt violence, political movements, and racism? Can social and political circumstances alter religion? This course focuses especially on colonialism, both in its earliest stages as well as contemporary variations on it. Students will also investigate how religious ideals have influenced racial, sexual, and cultural regulation