REL 163 - Imagining Race and Religion

Wills

This course explores intersections of race and religion in both literary and popular fiction from the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first. We will examine novelists’ personal experiences and their historical contexts. We will also analyze the religious, social, and political motives in the stories authors tell and the narrative forms they use. Not open to students who have taken Rel 262.

Meets the Philosophical and Religious Perspectives requirement.

Representative texts (not all required):

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)

Nella Larsen, Quicksand (1928)

Zora Neale Hurston, Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934)

James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1952)

Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977)

Paule Marshall, Praisesong for the Widow (1983)

William P. Young, The Shack (2007)

Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn (2016)