Black Religion and Pop Culture

Catalog description

This course uses art and popular culture to provide a dynamic view of Black religion in the United States and the Diaspora throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Discussion topics include: religiosity in the visual art of Kara Walker, P-Valley's Hoodoo representation, and James Baldwin's Black Sanctified aesthetics. By engaging broadly with visual art, film, music, and television, students will gain a sense of the various religious and spiritual traditions that pervade contemporary popular culture and gain the ability to think critically about how religious themes show up on television, in music, and in the world around them.