We offer a broad and diverse undergraduate curriculum focusing on the intertwined relationship between religion and politics across U.S. history, from the colonial era to the present. We also support early career scholars with fellowships that offer teaching and research opportunities at the Center.
Courses
Our courses range widely in topics, but all focus on the cultivation of research and interpretive skills necessary for analyzing and responding to issues that shape society and culture in the United States.
Gateway Courses
Gateway courses are required for the minor in religion and politics and serve as an introduction to the field of study.
This course investigates the intersections of the law and the social history of religious freedom in America. It examines issues such as constitutional principles of religious freedom and the rights of religious groups to dissent, from America’s founding to the present.
This course traces how conceptions of “religion” and “the state” changed in the United States from the turn of the twentieth century to the dawn of a new millennium.
Please check back soon for a gateway course offering!
Please check below for our other course offerings this semester. Read more about gateway courses and the undergraduate minor in religion and politics here.
Our courses cover a wide spectrum of topics related to the intersection of American religion and politics both historically and in the present. Select a semester to see our most recent course offerings or scroll to the bottom to view past courses.
This course investigates the intersections of the law and the social history of religious freedom in America. It examines issues such as constitutional principles of religious freedom and the rights of religious groups to dissent, from America’s founding to the present.
How did the United States come to be and what does that origin story mean for us today? This course explores that question by examining the American Revolution during its 250th anniversary with the help of renowned professors from WashU and around the country.
This course employs an interdisciplinary lens, reading historical, ethnographic, legal, and literary texts to both complicate and illuminate the relationship between Indigenous homelands and the U.S. nation state.
This course examines their personal biographies, speeches, writings, representations, FBI Files, and legacies as a way to better understand how the intersections of religion, race, and politics came to bare upon the freedom struggles of people of color in the U.S. and abroad.
Exploring a variety of religious holidays and civic rituals in American history and culture, this class ranges from public conflicts over Christmas through the evangelical invention of Halloween Hell Houses to ongoing struggles over the Civil War's memorialization.
This course explores the context of clergy sexual abuse and its pervasive cover-up in North American Christianity, both as the crisis has emerged in the media and as church leaders and laypeople have responded to it.
In this class, we will explore the horrific as it manifests in our political discourses, religious narratives, and cultural experiences. What does a confrontation with horror reveal to us and demand of us?
This course explores how race and religion have been constructed in migratory contexts across the Pacific, tracing the movement of people and ideas beyond national boundaries.
In this course, we investigate recent media projects created by Muslim creatives (across comedy, drama, music) and analyze the gendered and racialized hierarchies that dictate their narratives and levels of industry success.
This seminar focuses on the formation of “spirituality” in American culture from the Transcendentalist world of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman on through more recent expressions of the “spiritual-but-not-religious” sensibility.
This course examines the concept of vulnerability in contemporary ethics and politics to consider this critical question of ethical thought: what does our past experience have to do with our preparation for the future?
How do your relationships of love and friendship shape your life? Do they make you a better person? A better citizen? A better neighbor? This seminar examines the way love and friendship have been understood to define—or undermine—our pursuits of the good life.
