Penitentiaries to PILOTs: Religion and Institutions in Pennsylvania

Catalog description

This first-year seminar examines how religion works on, in, and through institutions such as penitentiaries, residential facilities for Native children, private universities, for-profit corporations, and public schools. Focusing on the State of Pennsylvania and the City of Philadelphia as examples of broader national trends, we investigate the fraught religious history of many local educational, correctional, and cultural institutions. The class begins with a field trip to the local Eastern State Penitentiary—the first prison in the world that focused on fostering religious penitence as a mode of rehabilitation—and ends by considering recent calls for the tax-exempt University of Pennsylvania to offer Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOTs) to the City of Philadelphia. We consider topics such as the role of religion in prison culture, federal and supreme court cases related to mandatory schoolhouse rituals such as Bible reading and the flag salute, and the precursors and aftermath of the 1985 MOVE bombing (a notorious incident in which the Philadelphia police dropped C4 explosives on the residence of a marginalized religious movement, destroying more than 60 homes in West Philadelphia).