REL 364 - Religion in the U.S. - Mexico Borderlands

This course focuses on the lived religious practices of Latine/x and indigenous peoples in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands that spans a variety of approaches to histories of religion and race within Latine/x religious history. This course has four units. Unit 1 focuses on historical approaches to indigenous survival and Spanish interactions with indigenous communities in the modern U.S.-Mex borderlands. Unit 2 focuses on racial reconstructions post-1848 and how religion is implicated in the process of establishing racial orders in these new borderlands as well as resistance from below against imperial projects. Unit 3 moves on to the discussion of the creation of a distinct Latine/x identity in the US and how religion factored into and influenced Chicano movement activism and theorizations of mestizaje within the movement. This section also considers the role of religion in the establishment of Latine/x identity and place, before moving into theorizing the mobility of these identities and places. Unit 4 examines modern migration at the U.S.-Mexico border and explores how Latine/x and indigenous peoples engage with the sacred within the act of migration and the fight for migrant rights itself. This blends new literature on sanctuary and immigrant rights activism with themes of survival and resistance discussed earlier in the course to explore how the racialized criminalization of immigration inspires new religious practices around the process of migration both by migrants and allied activists.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): HUM 110
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Cross-listing(s): CRES 326
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Evaluate data and/or sources.
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.