REL 112 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.

Credits

4 sh

Course Types

IGS Elective-Global Culture and Society; IGS Elective-Global Politics and History; Interreligious Studies Elective; American Studies Elective

Offered

• Fall
• Spring

Course Outcomes

1. Students will demonstrate their ability to think critically about the socially constructed nature of that which can be categorized as “religious.”
2. Students will recognize and describe breadth and diversity within particular constructions of religion.
3. Students will recognize and explain ways in which “religion” has cultural, political, and economic significance and/or ways in which cultural, political, and economic phenomena have religious significance.
4. Students will produce nuanced reflections on ways that religious traditions and religious communities have interacted with other religious traditions and communities throughout history.