RELST 4240

The Sexual Politics of Religion

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2024-2025 Catalog. Courses of Study 2024-2025 is scheduled to publish mid-June.

Drawing on feminist and queer theory and ethnographic studies of ritual and devotional practices around the world this course will consider the relationships among the social organization of sexuality, embodiment of gender, nationalisms and everyday forms of worship. In addition to investigating the norms of family, gender, sex and the nation embedded in dominant institutionalized forms of religion we will study such phenomena as ritual transgenderism, neo tantrism, theogamy (marriage to a deity), priestly celibacy and temple prostitution. The disciplinary and normalizing effects of religion as well as the possibilities of religiosity as a mode of social dissent will be explored through different ethnographic and fictional accounts of ritual and faithful practices in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Permission Note Not open to: first-year students.

Last 4 Terms Offered 2025SP, 2015FA, 2012FA

Distribution Category (ETM-AS, GLC-AS)

When Offered Fall.

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