Religion in French Society

Catalog description

Modernity's myths are both powerful and tenacious. It continues to be widely celebrated for the secularism, liberalism, and equality it appears to bring, in particular to countries of the West. And yet, we also know that modernity's rise has coincided with one of the most extended and horrific periods of violence in human history through Europe's imperial expansion and its enslavement of millions of Africans. How does our view of modernity shift if we do not accept its myths, and instead place the violence that was established in 1492 at its center? In this class, we will replace the “secular” with the “global” as a key analytic to understanding modernity. We will work to build a canon of texts and queries that address modernity’s violence by highlighting the Haitian Revolution, and the writings of Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Édouart Glissant, C.L.R. James, Nelly Schmidt, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Françoise Vergès, and Eric Williams.