REL 252 Black Religion and Popular Culture
This course engages religious themes and concepts within Black popular culture such as music, film, art, and literature that draw from, intersect, and interrupt the Black social imagination to highlight the multifaceted nature of public Blackness and Black public life. Evident in public events like the homegoing celebration of Ermias Joseph Asghedom aka Nipsey Hussle, and American rapper-producer Kanye West’s sixth studio album Yeezus, Black Religion and Popular Culture interrogates the spectacular dimensions of Blackness and their connection to the Black religious experience on the continent of Africa and in the African diaspora. This course argues that Black poetics of being and becoming deconstruct the ‘proper’ positioning of religion in the public sphere by blurring the lines between the sacred and the profane and recategorizing ideas of creativity, beauty, flourishing, and personhood. Exploring the politics of representation and other negotiations of Blackness in the realm of new and old media, entertainment, and celebrity while tracing their roots back to the slave experience and Black performance and expression, this course attends to their role in the continued construction of the Black identity and culture.