African Diaspora Religions and Spiritualities

Catalog description

This course is an introduction to religions and spiritual traditions of the African Americas including the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America, emphasizing present institutions and practices, their relationship to Africa and African spirituality, their shape and function during slavery, and their development from Emancipation to the present. Through various examples and case studies, we will trace the relationship between religion and resistance, race politics, gender and sexuality, religion and social change. The course addresses core ideas of the disciplines of religious studies and African Diaspora theory. The category of religion is explored through a diasporic framework that considers the legacy of slavery and contemporary racial and social hierarchies. The course approaches religions of the African Americas as epistemologies of resistance to white oppression introducing students to the diaspora condition as marked by historical violence and the dialectics of loss and displacement. Central to the course are concepts of religious orthodoxy and authenticity, cultural retentions and transformations and the dynamics of religious power and authority. The course follows a comparative framework in investigating religious life, introducing students to diaspora theory as a discourse of difference that engages critically with the particularities of the religious traditions of the African Americas without collapsing their differences. By addressing identity formations, the course focuses on religion as a discourse of power and one that articulates religious life as shaped by gender and race politics and by economics and social realities. To this end, the course follows an interdisciplinary approach and engages a variety of material including literary and historical texts, visual arts and music and dance makes it possible for students to understand the complexity of religious life in the African Americas.