RS 307: Religion & The Environment

Religion & The Environment

The ideas, discourses, and practices that we classify as religious, spiritual, or secular organize how we understand the world around us, and thus shape how we experience and interact with “nature.” At the same time, people within and across traditions operationalize these ideas, discourses, and practices to navigate environmental challenges and possibilities, leading to conflict and collaboration. In this course, we will examine how key concepts such as religion, the human, nature and more are constructed in relation to each other, and place these into a variety of historical, cultural, and political contexts. Examples that we might take up include the commons, colonialism, and commodification, the dynamics of gender and race, conservationism and public parks, (re)claiming sacred places, historical and contemporary resistance movements, and the role of ritual, affect, and other-than-human agency.

Instructor: Stacie Swain
TWF 11:30 - 12:20
CRN: 23856