Race and Religion

Program in the Study of Religion, University of California, San Diego, Winter 2009

Course Description:

This course explores the relationships between persistent concepts of race and religion in a number of historical contexts. Topics will include ancient and modern texts about “barbarians” and “others.” Specifically, we will look at the emergence of monotheism and the “Mosaic distinction;” “racialized” interpretations of the Bible; early Christianity and Pauline definitions of community; Rabbinic and recent definitions of “who’s a Jew;" ethnicity and early Islam; race and blood in the Middle Ages; the emergence of “secular” definitions of race in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Throughout the course we will be concerned with understanding the reasons why one community may insist that they constitute a race, while another will insist that what defines them is religion, while yet another claims both. What do these terms mean, and what is the connection between them? Is it possible to speak of communities, cultures and ethnicities without appealing to religious or racial terminology?