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CS92PROD
Biopolitics, Blackness and Spirit Baptism: The Birth of American Pentecostalism

RELI 324
Fall 2024
Section: 01  
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.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS RELI
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Requirement for: None
Past Enrollment Probability: 90% or above

Last Updated on OCT-04-2024
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