Biopolitics, Blackness and Spirit Baptism: The Birth of American Pentecostalism
RELI 324
Fall 2024
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
AFAM 327, AMST 324 |
| Course Cluster and Certificates: Urban Studies |
American Pentecostalism is a conservative, Protestant, Evangelical revival movement that emerges in and through Black practices that constitute an exclusion in the racialized religious, social, cultural, and political formations of early 20th-century United States. Rather than examining Pentecostalism through a single lens called "religion," this course will use the themes of Biopolitics and Blackness to examine Pentecostalism through its most commonly known feature--an experience called the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Pentecostals were narrated in popular and critical accounts in the late 19th and early 20th century as exhibiting criminality, insanity, and raced, gendered, and sexed Black pathology. These marks of abnormality were all part of a formation of power in America known as biopolitics. As an idea, biopolitics is popularized by French historian/philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault's concept attempts to explain how different intellectual and professional disciplines emerge in nations during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to best create a thriving population, which could be made to live. The power of the nation-state had traditionally been expressed in and through the power to kill. As a revival movement, Pentecostalism rehearses these themes, as early adherents fight over what it means to be made alive when racial Blackness is almost often seen as a mark of and for death. The course will study original accounts and sources from the historical period, read critical, interpretive accounts, and use a variety of media. All resources will be provided in class or via Moodle. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS RELI |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Major Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 90% or above |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Gastón Espinosa, William J. Seymour and the Origins of Global Pentecostalism: A Biography and Documentary History (2014)
Paul Alexander, Signs and Wonders: Why Pentecostalism Is the World¿s Fastest Growing Faith (2009)
Cheryl J. Sanders, Saints in Exile: The Holiness-Pentecostal Experience in African American Religion and Culture (1996)
Thomas Lemke, Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction, (2011)
Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76, (2003)
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1994)
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Examinations and Assignments:
Weekly discussion board posts; Group presentations; Mid-Term 4-page paper; Final Webpage Project
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Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course fulfills a Method & Theory requirement for the Religion major/minor |
| Instructor(s): Millner,Marlon Times: ..T.R.. 02:50PM-04:10PM; Location: FISK414; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 19 | | SR major: 4 | JR major: 4 | | |
| Seats Available: 13 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 3 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 5 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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