COURSE DESCRIPTION: (from the Course Catalog) This course examines the dynamic relationship between religion and American culture. The approach is a Cultural Studies method to offer ways of how to recognize, understand, and analyze religious influences in contemporary life through overarching themes: how religion shapes and is shaped by American life, how we encounter minority religions, and how the U.S. is coping with religious diversity.

COURSE GOALS: This is a course that explores the place of religion in American culture. Religion is a force whose presence often divides people, and the United States is an attempted experiment in preventing this from happening. But while this is fine in theory, our main goal in this class will be to acquire a more solid understanding of how this actually works in practice. What is the experience of religious people in America? How do minority religions gain acceptance? What is the relationship between accommodation and assimilation? These and similar questions will be explored in this class.