REL 355 The Politics of Religious Identities
Whether it is debates about the appropriateness of Ten Commandments monuments in the public square, the right to wear the Muslim headscarf in the workplace, or the freedom to pray in public schools, the ways in which religious identities and convictions animate politics are complicated and pervasive. How people understand religious identities has implications for how they define: the very idea of secularism, the roles of civil and religious law, and the realms of public and private. Religious sites, as they are associated with specific religious ideologies and communities, are often spaces of contestation and violence—be it a Sikh gurdwara in Wisconsin, an African American church in Charlotte, the Western Wall and Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, or the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, India. In this course, we will explore the politics of religious identities through case studies based in North America, Europe, Israel/Palestine and India/Pakistan. At the core of our inquiry will be questions about: how specific religious identities are shaped, articulated, and mobilized in political contexts; and how colonization, migration, demographic shifts, race, gender, sexuality, and globalization transform the way religious identities are understood and performed.