Autumn Semester 2025 Undergraduate Courses | Department of Comparative Studies

Comparative Studies Courses

Click here to jump down to Religious Studies course offerings.

This list is current as of March 19, 2025. Course schedule and descriptions are subject to change. We are adding here course-specific descriptions, as well, as they become available. Please refer to SIS for the most up-to-date information. Contact arceno.1@osu.edu if you notice any discrepancies or have any questions.

Comparative Studies 1100 Introduction to the Humanities: Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Online (asynchronous/synchronous) and In-person | Multiple sections
GEL Literature, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Literary, Visual and Performing Arts
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity

This introductory course is designed to survey some of the current preoccupations in the Humanities, especially as they relate to culture, power, and identity. Instructors of 1100 seek to present relevant issues in comparative cultural study, employing a mix of cultural theory, current events, and literature, visual, and performing arts with a focus on race, ethnicity, and gender. Not open to students with credit for 1100H.

Comparative Studies 1100H Introduction to the Humanities: Cross-Cultural Perspectives Honors

TR 12:45-2:05 | Kwaku Korang | Enarson 214
GEL Literature, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Literary, Visual and Performing Arts
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity

This Honors version of COMPSTD 1100 explores the role of literature and the arts in constructing, maintaining, and questioning the values and beliefs of diverse cultures and historical periods. Topics vary.

COMPSTD 2101 Literature and Society

TR 9:35-10:55 | Ilayda Ustel | Mendenhall 173
GEL Literature, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Literary, Visual and Performing Arts
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity

Study of relationships among politics, society, and literature; analysis of social and political elements of literature and film from diverse cultures and historical periods. Prereq: English 1110 (110) or equiv.

COMPSTD 2104H Literature, Science, and Technology Honors

TR 11:10-12:30 | Nancy Jesser | Lazenby 1
GEL Literature, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Literary, Visual and Performing Arts

We will engage in a study of therelationships among literature, broadly construed, science, and technology, including analyses of representations of science and technology in literature and film across several cultures and historical periods.  Because my training and research is in US cultures and society, content from this area may be over-represented. We will attend particularly to ideas of the ‘human’ through both an evolutionary and technological lens; what counts as 'human,’ and how do technology and science mediate ‘being human’ and being recognized as ‘human’. Furthermore, we will examine ways that our contemporaries imagine how science and technology influence and shape culture and nature AND how culture and nature shape deployments of science and technology.

We will frame our discussions in writings/materials centered on cyborgs and evolution. In doing so we will examine the interaction of human technologies, socio-economic situations, the imagined past and future: all of these include considerations of race, gender, ethnicity, colonization, migration, and politics, broadly construed.

COMPSTD 2105 Literature and Ethnicity

TR 2:20-3:40 | Umut Gurses | Ramseyer 9
GEL Literature, and GEL Social Diversity in the United States
GEN Literary, Visual and Performing Arts
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity

Study of relationships between literature and ethnicity; analysis of concepts of ethnicity as represented in literature and film of diverse cultures and historical periods. Prereq: English 1110 (110) or equiv.

COMPSTD / SPANISH 2242 Intro to Latinx Studies

TR 2:20-3:40 | Fernanda Diaz Basteris | Mendenhall 191
GEL Cultures and Ideas, and GEL Social Diversity in the United States
GEN Historical and Cultural Studies
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity

This course is an introduction to Latinx studies, with a focus on the history, politics, and cultural production of Latino/a communities in the U.S. and its borderlands. Cross-listed in Spanish. Not open to students with credit for Spanish 2242.

COMPSTD/ENGLISH 2264 Intro to Popular Culture Studies

TR 12:45-2:05 | Umut Gurses | Hayes 6
GEL Cultures and Ideas
GEN Historical and Cultural Studies
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity

Introduction to the analysis of popular culture texts, with special emphasis on the relationship between popular culture studies and literary studies. Prereq: English 1110 (110) or equiv. Cross-listed in English. Not open to students with credit for English 2264.

COMPSTD 2281 American Icons

TR 11:10-12:30 | Rhiar Kanouse | Journalism 371
GEL Cultures and Ideas, and GEL Social Diversity in the United States
GEN Historical and Cultural Studies
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity

Interdisciplinary methods in American studies; emphasis on the plurality of identities in American culture. Prereq: English 1110 (110) or equiv.

COMPSTD 2301 Intro to World Literature

TR 9:35-10:55 | Rhiar Kanouse | Denney 214
GEL Literature, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Literary, Visual and Performing Arts
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity

Have you ever thought about the fact that the idea of north as “up” is arbitrary? Even though north is no more “up” than south is “down,” these and other received ideas affect the way we see the world and the literatures in the world. This class focuses on learning to see culture, space, and literature in new ways. We will closely examine the idea of “world literature” itself, and we will consider the linguistic, cultural, technological, and economic networks that make texts from around the globe available to us. For example, how is the world of literature shaped by the fact that writers in many places can only access a significant audience by writing in English or producing works that “travel well” via translation? How do we imagine relationships between the works we read (a tiny fraction) and the many we do not? These topics will be explored through discussion of 20th- and 21st-century texts from five geopolitical areas: the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin and Central America/the Caribbean, and Europe/North America. Course assignments include engaged in-class and online discussion, reading analysis, and short papers. All assignments will help you pursue the course goals and participate deeply in a community of learners.

COMPSTD / ETHNSTDS 2321 Intro to Asian Indian Studies

TR 11:10-12:30 | Corinne Sugino | Mendenhall 125
GEL Cultures and Ideas, and GEL Social Diversity in the United States
GEN Historical and Cultural Studies
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity

This course is an introduction to Asian American studies, focusing on the history, experiences, and cultural production of Americans of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, South Asian, Filipino, and Southeast Asian ancestry.

COMPSTD / ETHNSTDS 2323 Intro to American Indian Studies

W 12:30-3:15 | fabi romero | Off Campus
GEL Cultures and Ideas, and GEL Social Diversity in the United States
GEN Historical and Cultural Studies
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity

This course is grounded in interdisciplinary engagement with Native scholars and the collective goals of Native/Indigenous wellness, political self-determination, and cultural revitalization. This course interrogates the challenges that Native peoples face from ongoing settler colonialism within what is now the United States, without ever losing sight of Native agency and persistence. This course will center Indigenous feminist scholarship and look at Indigeneity transnationally by incorporating Central American scholarship and research. Topics will include white supremacy, environmental degradation, individual and community resistance, anti-colonial liberation, and embodied ways of knowing and learning. We will also explore the gender, class, race, ethnic, and sexual differences of American Indian and Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

This offering is a class with students from Ohio State and students from the Ohio Reformatory for Women, a state prison. The class meets once a week at the prison facility in Marysville. An application for this course is required: https://opeep.osu.edu/courses-0
Students are enrolled ONLY by permission of instructor.

Brought to you by the Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project (OPEEP).

COMPSTD 2340 Intro to Cultures of Science and Technology

TR 11:10-12:30 | Maya Cruz | Mendenhall 173
GEL Cultures and Ideas, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Historical and Cultural Studies
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity

This course offers an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies. Science and Technology Studies, often referred to as STS, examines how science and technology are shaped by and shape culture and society. STS brings the sciences, social sciences, and humanities together by asking questions such as: How do we know what we know? What do we mean when we talk about things like scientific knowledge and methods? How do historical and social contexts shape technological production, and how does technology in turn shape our world, experiences, and relationships? As we address these questions, we will familiarize ourselves with critical thought about science and technology, including key historical, sociological, and anthropological theories. Together, we will sharpen our analytical skills by discussing a broad range of historical and contemporary examples in which scientific knowledge and technological capacity are entwined with power relations of race, gender, global capitalism, and politics. The course is organized in three units: 1. Science and Culture; 2. Technology and Culture; 3. Global Connections and Inequalities.

COMPSTD 2341 Technology, Science, and Society

GEL Cultures and Ideas, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies

Critical analysis of the relations among science, technology, and culture, with particular emphasis on ethical issues in technology and engineering. Prereq: English 1110, or equiv. Not open to students with credit for COMPSTD 2340.

COMPSTD 2343 Slavery, Gender, and Race in the Atlantic World

TuTh 11:10-12:30 | Zach Morgan | McPherson 1021
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity **NEW**

This course is an examination of slavery in Atlantic Africa and the Western Hemisphere with particular focus on how conceptions of race and gender shaped patterns of forced labor, the slave trade, and the development of European colonial societies in the Americas. Prereq: English 1110 (110), or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 243 or AfAmASt 243.

COMPSTD 2350 / ENGLISH 2270 Intro to Folklore

GEL Cultures and Ideas
GEN Historical and Cultural Studies
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity

Section 1: TBA

Folklore is the culture that people make for themselves. Not all of us are specialists, but all of us tell stories and cultivate communities. This class explores everyday expressive forms including stories, customs, objects and digital forms shared in informal contexts. Recurring central issues will include the dynamics of tradition, the nature of creativity and artistic expression, and the construction of group identities. We will consider various interpretive approaches to these examples of folklore and folklife and will investigate the history of folklore studies through readings and an independent collecting project in which students will gather folklore from the field, document it and interpret it for meaning. Under-read and represented texts in the field of folklore were intentionally chosen as readings for this course. By the end of this course, students should gain a basic orientation towards thinking through the power and significance behind the everyday creative expressions of their communities.

COMPSTD 2350H / ENGLISH 2270H Intro to Folklore Honors

TR 12:45-2:05 |Merrill Kaplan | McPherson 1008
GEL Cultures and Ideas
GEN Historical and Cultural Studies
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity

This Honors version of COMPSTD 2350 is a general study of the field of folklore including basic approaches and a survey of primary folk materials: folktales, legends, folksongs, ballads, and folk beliefs. Prereq: Honors standing, and English 1110, or equiv. Cross-listed in English. Not open to students with credit for COMPSTD 2350, English 2270, or English 2270H.

COMPSTD 2360 Intro to Comparative Cultural Studies

GEL Cultures and Ideas
GEN Historical and Cultural Studies

Introduction to interdisciplinary field of cultural studies; emphasis on relation of cultural production to power, knowledge, and authority, globally and locally. Prereq: English 1110 (110) or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 274. GE cultures and ideas course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies course.

COMPSTD 2367.08 American Identity in the World

Section 1: Online | TuTh 2:20-3:40 | Shaida Akbarian
Section 2: **Second Session Course**, Online |TuTh 3:55-5:15 | Shaida Akbarian
GEL Writing and Communication, Level 2; GEL Cultures and Ideas, and GEL Social Diversity in the United States
GEN Writing and Information Literacy
GEN Historical and Cultural Studies

American culture viewed from inside and from the perspective of foreign cultures, as seen in literature, film, art, music, journalism, folklore, and popular culture. Prereq: English 1110, or equiv, and Sophomore standing. Not open to students with credit for 2367.08H.

COMPSTD 2420 American Food Cultures

GEL Cultures and Ideas, and GEL Social Diversity in the United States
GEN Historical and Cultural Studies

This course provides a historical perspective on the development of the American food system, including associated discourses and cultures, leading to exploration of contemporary concerns about industrial food, the American diet, and the politics surrounding these issues.

COMPSTD 3302/E Translating Literature and Cultures

TuTh 9:35-10:55 | Gregory Jusdanis | Location: TBA
GEL Cultures and Ideas, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies course
GEN Historical and Cultural Studies

This Embedded Honors course is an introduction to issues and problems inherent to translating literatures and cultures. Prereq: English 1110 (110), or equiv. Depending on the section you enroll in (i.e., COMPSTD 3302 or 3302E), this course is not open to students with credit for the alternate section, i.e., COMPSTD 3302E or 3302, respectively.

COMPSTD 3603 Love in World Literature

TuTh 3:55-5:15 | Lucia Bortoli | Location: TBA
GEL Literature, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Literary, Visual and Performing Arts

Representations of love in world literature; emphasis on mythological, psychological, and ideological aspects of selected representations in different cultures and time periods. Prereq: English 1110 (110), or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 3603H.

COMPSTD 3606 Quest in World Literature

**Second Session Course** TuTh 11:10-12:30 | Lucia Bortoli | Location: TBA
GEL Literature, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Literary, Visual and Performing Arts

We are all familiar with the fantastic journey of Frodo and Sam in the film trilogy The Lord of the Rings or the action-filled adventure of Indiana Jones in The Raiders of The Lost Ark. Still, not many connect these box office movies with their ancient predecessors the Epic of Gilgamesh or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The archetypal motif of the Quest has characterized literature and the arts over the past thousands of years. It has explored the human soul and condition, always satisfying the need for entertainment and self-reflection with questions about self-awareness and agency in the pursuit of life's meanings and purposes.

In this course, we will analyze classical and contemporary texts that best evoke the spirit of the Quest in a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary manner. We will focus on the texts' social, political, ideological, economic, and religious contexts. We will also address issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and class, as well as ask questions about social injustice. And, last but not least, by admiring diverse cultural expressions, we will better our aesthetic sensibility and artistic appreciation.

COMPSTD 3607 Film and Lit as Narrative Art

GEL Visual and Performing Arts, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Literary, Visual and Performing Arts

Relationships between film and literature; emergence of cinematic art as a form of representation with emphasis on diverse cultural traditions. Prereq: English 1110, or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 3607H.

COMPSTD 3608 Representations of the Experience of War

GEL Literature, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Literary, Visual and Performing Arts

Representations of war in works of literature, religious texts, and film from diverse cultures and time periods. Prereq: English 1110, or equiv.

COMPSTD 3990 Approaches to Comparative Studies

Introduces comparative studies majors to theoretical tools, methods of investigation, and key concepts in comparative studies research and scholarship. Prereq: English 1110, or equiv. Comparative Studies majors, or permission of instructor.

COMPSTD 4021 Banned Books and the Cost of Censorship

M 9:15-12 | Ashley Hope Pérez | Hagerty 62, with some sessions taught online
GEN Citizenship

Designed specifically for the Citizenship for a Diverse and Just World GE theme, this course examines competing understandings of citizenship through an interdisciplinary examination of the dramatic rise of book banning in recent years. By reading banned books and examining the debates surrounding them, we establish important connections between diversity, justice, and citizenship. Together, we ask:

What forces motivate this “new” book banning, and why have there been more book bans in the past three years than ever recorded in U.S. history?
What do these removals mean for the learners who rely on schools and libraries for access to information and literature?
How do attempts to censor library materials illuminate broader social, cultural, and political tensions?

As we tackle these questions, we also develop an understanding of citizenship as an engaged practice by which we treat as important the experiences, needs, and interests of a wide range of people. We consider how book banning is symptomatic of a resistance to this kind of citizenship, as when political groups reframe terms like “liberty” and “justice” in ways that exclude others from the privileges that they claim as rights for themselves. We examine the impacts of book banning on young people and their developing literacy, sense of belonging, and access to information. Data and trends in book removals reveal that the negative consequences are especially acute for BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and other historically marginalized communities. The course locates these issues in local, regional, national, and international contexts.

COMPSTD 4597.02 Global Culture

TR 12:45-2:05 | Zach Morgan | Baker Systems 136

This course examines contemporary global cultural flows, the concepts useful in analyzing them, and the questions they raise about power and cultural change. Prereq: Completion of Second Writing course. Not open to students with credit for 597.02. GE diversity global studies and cross-disciplinary seminar course.

COMPSTD 4597.03 Global Folklore

TR 11:10-12:30 | Katherine Borland | Hagerty 455B
GEN Migration, Mobility, and Immobility

This course provides an exploration of the dynamics of folklore in a global environment. We will interrogate how culture becomes rooted in place (immobility), how it circulates (mobility) and how it moves from one group to another, one context to another (migration), producing a variety of consequences. How do people from all walks of life create meaning and beauty in their everyday lives? How do communities and groups maintain a collective sense of themselves that distinguishes them from other communities/groups, particularly in a period of rapid globalization? What does it mean to respect and conserve cultural diversity? And what do patterns of cultural circulation tell us about relations between individuals and groups, institutions and groups, as well as among nations. Students will begin by learning key concepts of folklore scholarship: culture, place, tradition, performance, genre, the local/global distinction, the folk/popular divide, the interplay of the customary and innovative in folklore production. Students will develop an expansive definition of folklore as the means by which groups both distinguish themselves from as well as fashion bridges with diverse communities. We will look at the ways folklore moves through a range of concepts spanning everything from sacred ritual to touristic display. We will focus on the transmission and transformation of cultural knowledge and practice in situations of want and plenty, peace and conflict, mobility and rootedness attending to the relations of power operating in and through traditional culture.

COMPSTD 4645 Cultures of Medicine **NEW**

TR 2:20-3:40 | Nancy Jesser | Mendenhall 125
GEN Health and Wellbeing

This 4-credit GE Health and Wellbeing and Original Research and Creative Inquiry course provides students with a comprehensive examination of the social and cultural study of medicine in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies. Students can expect to engage with interdisciplinary approaches to the concepts of health and wellbeing from across the field of Science and Technology Studies that emphasize the study of the cultures of health and medicine as it relates to systems and structures of power that shape individual, community, and global and transnational experiences of health.

This course will provide students to consider these topics and questions specifically in terms of the issue of “access” to health and wellbeing. Students can expect to critically engage with questions like: What is access to health and wellbeing? What is health and wellbeing, anyway? Who gets to decide? Who gets to be healthy, experience wellness, and thrive? Who doesn’t? Why?

Topics include health equity and access to health and care, medicalization and the relationships between health and categories of social difference like race, gender, and disability, and health and wellbeing in the context of the environment and environmental crisis and contemporary health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, this course will provide students opportunities to critically engage with questions concerning what it means to “access” health and wellbeing through a comprehensive study of “access” to care and cure, “access” to health, and the differential experience and exposure to illness, debilitation, and death at the individual level, community level, and state level within global and transnational contexts, to understand the complex ways in which cultures of medicine, science, and technology shape access to health and wellbeing along lines of social difference to distribute life chances unevenly across local, global, and transnational contexts.

As an immersive/experiential “high-impact” course, students will engage in an advanced, immersive “hands-on” course-long research project that asks them to apply the concepts, ideas, and theories of the course readings to analyze what it means to access health and wellbeing in their immediate community, before thinking critically about what it means to engage with health and wellbeing “beyond access.” As such, by completing this course, students can expect to learn and apply research skills including data collection, documentation, interpretation, and writing.

COMPSTD/AFAMAST/WGSST 4921 Intersections: Approaches to Race, Gender, Class, and Sexuality

TR 11:10-12:30 | Cassidy Campbell | Mendenhall 175
GEL Citizenship for a Diverse and Just World

This course examines intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality in various sites within American culture (e.g., legal system, civil rights discourse, social justice movements). Prereq: One course in CompStd, WGSSt, or AfAmASt. Cross-listed in African American and African Studies and Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Not open to students with credit for AFAMAST 4921 or WGSST 4921.

COMPSTD/AFAMAST/PUBAFRS 5240 Race and Public Policy in the US

MW 9:35-10:55 | Instructor: TBA | Page 60

This course explores Race and Public Policy in the United States from Reconstruction to the present. In particular, the class is designed to look at the long list of "hot topics" in the current policy landscape, including policing, housing, wealth gap, immigration, voting, political representation, and others. Cross-listed in African American and African Studies and Public Affairs. Not open to students with credit for AFAMAST 5240 or PUBAFFAIRS 5240.

Religious Studies Courses

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RELSTDS 2102.01 Literature and Religion

WF 12:45-2:05 | Spencer Dew | PAES A103
GEL Literature, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Literary, Visual, and Performing Arts

This course explores the relations between literature and religion, proceeding through close reading and discussion of poetry, short stories, and selected novels addressing concepts like death, identity, memory, and love. Prereq: English 1110 (110) or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 2102.01H, CompStd 2102.01 (202.01), or 2102.01H (202.01H).

RELSTDS 2102.02 Comparative Sacred Texts

TR 12:45-2:05 | Kate Kaura | Mendenhall 175
GEL Literature, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Literary, Visual and Performing Arts

Sacred texts like the Bible, Qur'an, Torah, Vedas, Buddhist Sutras, Native American texts and the Guru Ganth Sahib are some of the most influential and widely read documents in the world. How do these ancient texts, both written and oral, still shape how we interpret and practice religion today? How do they still come alive in religious rituals, beliefs, practices, holidays, and morals in our communities? This course will explore if and how sacred texts change and adapt to modern life with a rich understanding of the historical, cultural, social, economic, and gendered contexts in which they came. This course will also look at newer spiritual movements such as "Spiritual but not Religious", New Age Spirituality, "Manifestation Doctrine", and yoga communities- and how a history of diverse sacred texts influenced these American movements' development. The course will culminate with students presenting a non-sacred text they are interested in (like a fiction book, comic series, musician's lyrics, video game, etc) as a sacred text- defined by how we critically thought about and discussed what counts as a "sacred text" throughout the semester.

RELSTDS 2370 Introduction to Comparative Religion
GEL Cultures and Ideas, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Historical and Cultural Studies
GEN Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity

What is religion? Why are there so many of them? What is the role of religion in the world today, particularly in relation to contemporary social, political, and cultural changes in a complex global context? How is religious identity tied in complex ways to race, gender, and ethnicity?

This course provides a general introduction to the comparative study of religion that addresses these and other fundamental questions. We will begin with a controversial “test case” in the study of religion – the Native American Church and its use of peyote as a sacrament – which raises key questions of religious freedom and the law. We will then discuss six different ways of defining religion and use them to make sense of this particular case. In the rest of the course, we will then look at a series of major traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and contemporary new religious movements. To conclude, we will discuss several different ways of making sense of the plurality and diversity of religious traditions today.

In addition to lectures, films, and discussions, this class will involve several optional field trips to religious organizations in the Columbus area. Students are expected to complete one mid-term and one final exam, as well as two field observation papers based on visits to religious organizations or events that are significantly different from their own.

RELSTDS / NELC 3667 Messages from Beyond: Divination, Prophecy, and the Occult in Religion and Culture

WF 11:10-12:30 | Daniel Frank | Hagerty 50
GEN Lived Environments

In this course, we will explore how people from antiquity to our time have sought to find meaning in the complexity and uncertainty around their physical and social environment to access what they perceived as hidden realms as sources of meaning. Students will learn how messages from beyond guide their daily lives, provide them with sources of authority or companionship for their art of philosophy. Cross-listed with Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. Not open to students with credit for NELC 3667.

RELSTDS/SASIA 3671 Religions of India

MW 11:10-12:30 | Patrick Dunn | Cunz Hall 180
GEN Historical and Cultural Studies

History and structure of South Asian religions with attention to myth, ritual, art, philosophy, and social stratification. 2370 recommended.

RELSTDS / HISTORY 3680 Religion and Law in Comparative Perspective

MW 9:35-10:55 | Isaac Weiner | Ramseyer 115
GEL Historical Study, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Citizenship for a Diverse and Just World

Comparative, interdisciplinary approach to studying religion and law. Drawing on concrete cases, historical studies, and theoretical literature, the course explores how the relationship between religion and law has been configured differently in different liberal democracies, such as the U.S., France, and Israel, and what this might mean for contemporary debates. Cross-listed with History. Not open to students with credit for HISTORY 3680.

RELSTDS / AFAMAST 4342 Religion, Meaning, and Knowledge in Africa and Its Diaspora

WF 11:10-12:30 | Spencer Dew | Mendenhall 131
GEL Cultures and Ideas, and GEL Diversity: Global Studies
GEN Traditions, Cultures, & Transformations

In this class we'll study religious communities and movements in Africa and across the African Diaspora, wrestling with issues of colonialism and the role of Africa in the religious imagination.

RELSTDS/INTSTDS 4873 Contemporary Religious Movements in Global Context

MW 12:45-2:05 | Hugh Urban| Journalism 274
GEN Citizenship for a Diverse and Just World

At the beginning of the twentieth century, many sociologists had predicted that religion would gradually wane in importance as our world became increasingly scientific, rational and technological. And yet today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, it would seem that exactly the opposite has happened: new religious movements have proliferated wildly throughout the world in the last hundred years and have become intimately tied to the larger political, economic and cultural forces of globalization.

This course will examine a series of new religious movement that have emerge within the last 150 years, placing them within the larger contexts of globalization and transnationalism. These will include: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Spiritualism, the Shakers, the Nation of Islam, Rastafarianism, Vodou, and various forms of religious terrorism (such as Islamic extremism, Aum Shinrikyo and the Christian Identity movement). In the course of our discussion, we will ask: why has religion not in fact wanted as a global force but instead become even more powerful and relevant in the last century? How are new religious movements related to larger transnational flows of people, goods and information? Why do religious movements often become linked to political violence and terrorism?

In addition to lectures, discussions and films, the class will involve field trips to new religious groups in the Columbus area. Students will be required to write two short papers and one group presentation based on some new religious movement not covered in the body of the class.