The goal of this course is to think critically about freedom as an ideology and institution. What does it mean to be free? What are the relationships among individual liberties, national sovereignty, and civil rights? In what ways has freedom been defined in relation to, and materially depended on, unfreedom? At the same time, this course will treat American “religions” in a similar critical fashion, as a historically contingent category that has been forged and inflected within the same context of White Christian settler empire. Religion and freedom have intertwined throughout American history, including in the ideal of religious freedom. Our critical interrogation of freedom should help us think carefully about power, working with but also beyond tropes of domination and resistance.
Share
This course gave me a much better understanding of the intertwined origins of racism and capitalism.
— Fall 2019
This was probably one of my favorite classes that I've taken at Wash U. It was organized very well; the readings were manageable and led to some interesting class discussions.
