Anthropology 226: Religion in America

Religion is deeply woven into the historical fabric of American life. From the pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas (Cahokia) to the pilgrims at Plymouth Colony, from the emergence of new religions like Mormonism to movements for social justice such as abolitionism and civil rights, religion cuts across the American experience—its political, legal, social, and cultural formations. This course offers an archaeological, historical, and ethnographic survey of religion in the United States, examining not only the ways it has been encoded in the nation’s founding documents and institutional practices, but also in the diversity of its lived forms. The course will investigate the ways religion becomes a site of contestation and identity formation. It will explore how religion is entangled in the many contradictions of American life, its forms of national storytelling, and the practice and afterlives of slavery and settler colonialism. May be elected as Religion 226.