REL 224
U.S. Latinx Religions Spring 2025
Division II
Cross-listed AMST 224 / LATS 224

In this course, we will engage aspects of Latina/o/x/e religious beliefs, experiences, practices, and expressions in the United States of America. Given the diversity of Latinx communities and religious lives in the U.S.A., we consider select contexts that help us understand the challenges of studying and defining the “religious” and its hybridity in Latinx contexts. We will survey certain selected religious traditions and practices in Latinidad — such as popular devotions to La Virgen de Guadalupe, healing traditions and curanderismo, home altar traditions, Latinx Pentecostalism, crypto-Judaism, Latinx Muslims, and African-rooted spiritualities such as Santería. In addition, we will study Latinx approaches to traditional US religious expressions of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. By focusing on particular moments of religious expression as elucidated in specific historiographies, ethnographies, art, literature, film, we will seek to garner a greater understanding of how Latinx communities express and practice their religious traditions and spiritualities.