RELI 330a - Religion,Critical Thought and Politics

Institution:

Vassar College

Subject:

Description:

Advanced study in selected aspects of religion and contemporary philosophical and political theory. May be taken more than once for credit when content changes. Topic for 2008/09a: Religion, Race, and Democracy in American Pragmatism. How can religion be salvaged when we can no longer rely on supernatural certainty In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a group of American thinkers, the Pragmatists, were seized by this crisis of religious uncertainty, a dilemma with which a set of African American thinkers also grapple. Their answers, classical and contemporary, give rise to a variety of frameworks for thinking about the morals of both democratic participation and of race. This class asks how Pragmatism's discourse on religion makes it especially good terrain for articulating these concerns, and how pragmatic conceptions of religion influence the identity labels we use to create political community. Readings include William James, John Dewey, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Cornel West. Mr. Kahn.

Credits:

1.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.vassar.edu

Phone Number:

(845) 437-7000

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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