Black Women and the Sacred
RELI 211
Fall 2025
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
AFAM 210, FGSS 231 |
This course examines how Black women engage spiritual practices, in and beyond religious traditions to remake an anti-Black world. Black women have famously been called the "mule of the world." In this role, the Black woman is beast of burden, property, ungendered, enslaved. As such the Black woman constitutes a limit for the normal, the human, and thus the religious. In the study and practice of religions in the modern, western world, Black women are included through exclusion as heretics, demons, and witches. Nevertheless, Black women and their practices across normative formations of nation, race, and religion have cultivated social practices, ideas, and communities which form a counter-poetics, a counter-mythology, and an otherwise possibility of what religion, unbounded and non-normative might be. This course examines typical accounts of Black women in different religious traditions, but more importantly, the course examines how Black women's practices upset normal accounts of nation, race, gender, sexuality, and religion. Course focuses on digital humanities in learning and assignments. Books for purchase are not required. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS RELI |
| Course Format: Discussion | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (Religion Minor)(Religion) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 90% or above |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Possible readings include authors M. Jacqui Alexander, Hortense Spillers, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Edwidge Danticat, Keri Day, bell hooks, Jan Willis, Octavia Butler, Maryse Condé, Harriett Jacobs, and audio visuals from Beyoncé, Mahalia Jackson, Missy Elliott, Rungano Nyoni, and Michaela Coel.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Short midterm paper, discussion leader/response posts, web blog and final project |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course satisfied the "Method and Theory" or "additional course" requirement for the Religion major. |
| Instructor(s): Millner,Marlon Times: ...W... 07:10PM-10:00PM; Location: TBA |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 2 | JR major: 2 | | |
| Seats Available: 12 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 2 | JR non-major: 2 | SO: 4 | FR: 3 |
| 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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