Global Circuits: Religion, Race, Empire

This seminar explores how American entanglements of race and religion shape and are part of larger global processes. Over the course of the semester, we will investigate these entanglements through conceptual, historical, and ethnographic questions and insights on the remapping of religious traditions and communal experiences onto imperial terrain. We will examine this through a range of problem spaces including: colonial rule and racial hierarchies; religious difference and migration; the racialization of religion; diaspora and empire; persecution and power; and global geographies of the War on Terror. This course is not an exhaustive account of the enmeshment of race and religion in the United States or globally. Rather, this course aims to critically unpack formations of religion and race, and their contemporary mediation by American geopolitics.

Note on spring 2021 course mode: Fully remote. Synchronous each meeting.