- Studying Religion in America

Catalog description

An exploration of the dimensions of American religious experience and identity through a focus on the definitions, debates, and power structures that have informed historical understandings of the term “religion” and the attendant implications for religious freedoms. While covering the range of religious experiences in America is surely too vast a topic for any one semester, this course nonetheless offers an introduction to a number of religious traditions to serve as jumping-off points for students’ future study and research. Traditions could include Indigenous and Black religious traditions, as well as New Religious Movements (NRMs). Students will examine how Western colonial and Euro/Christocentric interpretations of religion have functioned to circumscribe and deny the rights of minority religious groups, and the need to employ a multicultural and decolonial lens when studying religions. In the process, students will gain familiarity with multiple interpretive and methodological frameworks, questions, and debates within the academic study of American religions including race, gender, sexuality, ritual, music, politics, religious freedom/oppression, appropriation, and cult vs. religion.