REL 309
Scriptures and Race Fall 2015
Division II
Cross-listed LATS 309 / AFR 309
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

This course focuses on the relationships between constructions of race in the post-1492 American world and “Christian scriptures.” The big questions of the course examine the ways that contestations of power are intertwined with the making of, interpretation, and transformation of sacred texts. Both scriptures and race are conceptual constellations of human social imagination, and yet their conceptualization has often been embroiled in the hopes and traumas of everyday life in the Americas. How and why did these two terms come to have any relationship to each other? How and why do peoples engage “scriptures”? In what ways have “scriptures” informed how peoples imagine themselves, their communities, and their relationship to religious and racial “others”? How did “scriptures” and “race” inform each other in modern colonialisms and imperialisms? In this course, we will examine the ways that scriptures have been employed in order to understand and develop notions of race, and we will examine how ideas about and lived experiences of race have informed the concept of scriptures as well as practices of scriptural interpretation.
The Class: Format: lecture/discussion
Limit: 20
Expected: 15
Class#: 1819
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: evaluation based upon participation, short writing exercises, a 5- to 8-page take-home midterm essay, and a 10- to 15-page final essay
Prerequisites: none
Distributions: Division II
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
LATS 309 Division II AFR 309 Division II REL 309 Division II
Attributes: LATS Core Electives

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