Religious Studies 790: Race, Religion, Coloniality (Winter 2024)

SYLLABUS

Religious Studies 790: Race, Religion, Coloniality (Winter 2024)

This online syllabus is posted at https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/danahol/790/ and is also accessible by way of my home page (see below). In case there are changes to our schedule or to other aspects of the course, this web syllabus will be updated and students will be notified by email. Please be sure to keep me up to date about your email addresses.

Class Meetings: times & location to be communicated by e-mail

INSTRUCTOR: Professor Dana Hollander, Department of Religious Studies, danahol@mcmaster.ca*, https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/danahol/

*in your email messages, please let me know how I can reach you by phone.

Office Hours: TBA

U.S. postage stamp issued August 16, 1963. Design by George Olden. Collection of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.

updated January 2, 2024

☛ JUMP TO WEEKLY SCHEDULE: January / February / March / April

COURSE DESCRIPTION: We will study a selection of works that analyze historic and ongoing interconnections between race/racism, whiteness, coloniality, notions of "religion" in the West, and Judaism/Jewishness.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

Regular attendance of class sessions, careful preparation of readings, and regular participation in our discussions.

One or more in-class presentation(s) designed to introduce and guide discussion of one or more of the readings during our session. Preparing a presentation will include researching relevant background and context for that reading, beyond what will be required of other seminar participants for that week's session. I will provide details on the expectations and format for presentations, as well as feedback on your participation and presentation in the course of the semester, including an interim participation/presentation grade, taking account of a prior self-assessment which you will be invited to provide, the week of February 26.

Final Paper (15-20 pages), preceded by a paper proposal (1.5-3 pages, plus bibliography, due February 26; detailed assignment to be communicated) on a topic chosen in consultation with, and approved by, me, due April 11.

Grades will be based on Participation/Presentation(s) 45%, Final Paper 55%.

COURSE MATERIALS:

Details on how to obtain each reading will be communicated in class and by email.

It is a requirement of this seminar that you consistently use and bring to the seminar meetings your own print copies of the works we are studying - in the same edition selected for the class.

General Readings:

Students with no prior coursework in Jewish Studies should read:
Nicholas de Lange, Judaism, 2nd ed. (2003) [Mills Course Reserves, or borrow on archive.org]

Many of our readings will refer to W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) and Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), so please familiarize yourselves with the general contours of their thought. Obtaining your own print copies of the books named below is highly recommended:

FANON

Background/Orientation:

John E. Drabinski, "Frantz Fanon" (2019), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Robert Bernasconi, "Situating Frantz Fanon's Account of Black Experience," ch. 12 in Bernasconi/Judaken (eds.), Situating Existentialism. Key Texts in Context (2012) [ebook via McMaster Library]

Black Skin, White Masks, (Peau noire, masques blancs, 1952)

The Wretched of the Earth (Les damnés de la terre, 1961)

(these will be added to Mills Course Reserves)

DU BOIS

Background/Orientation:

Donald J. Morse, "William Edward Burghardt Du Bois," Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Paul C. Taylor, "William Edward Burghardt Du Bois," Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists (2011) [download entire e-book via McMaster Library]

The Souls of Black Folk (1903). The Norton Critical Edition also includes supplementary materials.

Some time before February 16 (in preparation for thinking about your Final Paper proposal), please read:
Gerald Graff et al., They Say/I Say. The Moves That Matter In Academic Writing, 2nd ed. [on reserve at Mills Library, or borrow on archive.org]: chapters 1-12. OR 5th ed.: chapters 1-11 and 14-15.

January 11 - Introductions, Planning Meeting

January 18

George M. Fredrickson, Racism. A Short History (2002), chaps. 1 and 2

George Yancy, "Introduction: Flipping the Script" in Look, a White! Philosophical Essays on Whiteness (2012), pp. 1-14; and "Dear White America" (New York Times, December 24, 2015)

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, "Race and Globalization" (2002)

Combahee River Collective, "Combahee River Collective Statement" (1977), from Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, ed. Barbara Smith (2000)

Supplementary

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, "Until Black Women Are Free, None of Us Will Be Free. Barbara Smith and the Black Feminist Visionaries of the Combahee River Collective," newyorker.com, July 20, 2020

Black Lives Matter and Anti-Racism Resources, compiled by members of the Inclusivity, Diversity, and Equity Committee at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing

January 25

Anya Topolski, "The Race-Religion Constellation," from Routledge Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, ed. John Solomos. Section: "Origins and Genealogy," ed. Nasar Meer (2023?)

Talal Asad, "The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category" [1983/1993], in Genealogies of Religion

Gil Anidjar, Semites. Race, Religion, Literature, ch. 1: "The Semitic Hypothesis (Religion's Last Word)"

Santiago Slabodsky, "It's the Theology, Stupid! Coloniality, Anti-Blackness, and the Bounds of 'Humanity,'" in Anti-Blackness and Christian Ethics, ed. Lloyd/Prevot (2017)

Michael Fishbane, Judaism. Revelation and Traditions (1987), chap. 1

Background/Supplementary

Azar Dakwar, "Gil Anidjar," Critical Theory for Political Theology 2.0, Political Theology Network (November 2, 2021)

February 1: No Class; instructor away. Please do the following as advance preparation for our March 7 session:

read: Immanuel Kant, selection from Critique of Practical Reason (1788), trans. Mary Gregor, in Practical Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Parts III ("On the Primacy of Pure Practical Reason"), IV ("The Immortality of the Soul as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason"), and V ("The Existence of God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason").

listen to: Dr. Hollander's lecture on Kant for the undergraduate course "God and Philosophy" (SCAR 2LL3), and

if you are available to do so: join the SCAR 2LL3 tutorial (time & location TBA) for discussion.

Additional resources:

Emil Fackenheim, "Kant's Philosophy of Religion" (1985) in The God Within

German edition of Critique of Practical Reason

February 8

Nahum D. Chandler, "Of Exorbitance: The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Thought," Criticism 50 no. 3 (Summer 2008)

Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism (2021), ch. 1: "The Racist Foundations of Evangelicalism in the Nineteenth Century" [book will be added to Mills Course Reserves]

Background/Supplementary/Further Reading

Mark E. Biddle, "The Curse of Ham," Bible Odyssey (n.d.)

Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (EBR), s.v. "Ham (Person)"

David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham. Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2003) [ebook via McMaster Library]

Sylvester A. Johnson, The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity. Race, Heathens, and the People of God (2004) [ebook via McMaster Library]

Terrence Johnson, Tragic Soul-Life: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Moral Crisis Facing American Democracy (2012) [ebook via McMaster Library]

Final Paper Assignment will be communicated this week

February 15 - Special Session with Abby Kulisz (Religious Studies, McMaster)

Denise Kimber Buell, "Race and Universalism in Early Christianity," Journal of Early Christian Studies 10, no. 4 (Winter 2002)

Cynthia M. Baker, Jew (2017): "Jew or Jew? A Note on Orthography"; Introduction; chap. 1.

Adele Reinhartz, "The Vanishing Jews of Antiquity," Marginalia Review of Books (June 24, 2014)

Daniel Boyarin, "Imagined Religion: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Judaism," interview on "The Tel Aviv Review" podcast (April 2, 2018), looking ahead to his book Judaism. The Genealogy of a Modern Notion (2018)

Background/Supplementary

Magda Teter, Christian Supremacy. Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism (2023): Intro., chaps. 1-3 [ebook at McMaster Library]

Monday, February 26 - Paper Proposal and Participation Self-Assessment due

No meeting on February 29. Instead, this week we will have individual meetings on paper proposals and the interim participation grade.

March 7

review selection from Kant, Critique of Practical Reason assigned for February 1 (see above)

Kant, "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" (1784), in Political Writings, trans. H. B. Nisbet, ed. Hans Reiss (1970). (Alternative translation by Allen W. Wood in Kant, Anthropology, History, and Education, ed. Zöller/Louden (2007) )

Christian Wilhelm von Dohm, excerpt from Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status of the Jews (1781), trans. Helen Lederer, from The Jew in the Modern World, ed. Mendes-Flohr/Reinhartz (1980/1995)

J. Kameron Carter, Race. A Theological Account (2008), Part I

M. Shawn Copeland, "Blackness Past, Blackness Future--and Theology," South Atlantic Quarterly 112 no. 4 (Fall 2013)

Background/Supplementary:

Manfred Kuehn, "Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)," Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers (2016) [ebook via McMaster Library]

Biko Mandela Gray, "Blackness," Critical Theory for Political Theology 2.0, Political Theology Network (April 19, 2022)

James Cone, TBA

Further Reading

J. Kameron Carter, The Anarchy of Black Religion: A Mystic Song (2023) [ebook via McMaster Library]

March 14

Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination. Theology and the Origins of Race (2010): ch. 1

Hortense J. Spillers, "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book" (1987), in Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture (2003).

Background Reading

Teter, Christian Supremacy, ch. 4 and 5

Further Reading

Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness. An Education in Belonging (2020) [ebook via McMaster Library]

March 21

Sylvia Wynter, "1492: A New World View," in Race, Discourse, and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View, ed. Hyatt/Nettleford (1995)

Nelson Maldonado-Torres, "Race, Religion, and Ethics in the Modern/Colonial World," Journal of Religious Ethics 42 (2014), no. 4.

Background/Supplementary

Nelson Maldonado-Torres, "Secularism and Religion in the Modern/Colonial World-System: From Secular Postcoloniality to Postsecular Transmodernity," in Mabel Moraña et al., Coloniality At Large. Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate (2008)

An Yountae, "A Decolonial Theory of Religion: Race, Coloniality, and Secularity in the Americas," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 88, no. 4 (Dec. 2020)

"Doctrine of Discovery stands in reconciliation's path," Catholic Register (March 23, 2022)

Further Reading

Sylvia Wynter, "Towards the Sociogenic Principle: Fanon, Identity, the Puzzle of Conscious Experience, and What It Is Like to Be 'Black'" (2001)

-----, "Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, after Man, Its Overrepresentation--An Argument, " CR: The New Centennial Review 3 (2003), no. 3

March 28

Frank B. Wilderson III, Red, White and Black (2010), chaps. 1 and 2

Vincent Lloyd, Religion of the Field Negro, ch. 7: "For What Are Blacks to Hope?"

Background/Further Reading

George Weddington, "Political Ontology and Race Research: A Response to 'Critical Race Theory, Afro-pessimism, and Racial Progress Narratives,'" Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 5 (2019), no. 2.

Frank B. Wilderson III, "Blacks and the Master/Slave Relation," interview from "Against the Grain," KPFA Radio (March 4, 2015) in Afro-Pessimism. An Introduction (2017) [download entire ebook]

Kihana Miraya Ross, "Call It What It Is: Anti-Blackness," New York Times, June 4, 2020

Jesse McCarthy, "On Afropessimism," Los Angeles Review of Books, July 20, 2020

"Afropessimism and Its Others: A discussion between Hortense J. Spillers and Lewis R. Gordon," May 24, 2021

Vincent Lloyd, Black Dignity (2023)

April 4

Karen Brodkin, "How Did Jews Become White Folks?" How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America (1998)

Jane Anna Gordon, "What Should Blacks Think When Jews Choose Whiteness?" Critical Philosophy of Race 3 (2015), no. 2.

Dorothy Kim, "The Historiographies of Premodern Critical Race Studies and Jewish Studies," Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 9 (2022), no. 1

-----, "Intersectionality in the Medieval Archive," lecture at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, November 3, 2021 (Cf. Kim's related publication: "Before Intersectionality," in Routledge Companion to Intersectionalities, ed. Pinto/Nash [2023])

Shaul Magid, "Judeopessimism: Antisemitism, History, and Critical Race Theory", lecture at Harvard Divinity School, April 3, 2023. (Cf. Magid's shorter earlier essay on this topic , "Judeopessimism: On Antisemitism and Afropessimism", Ayin One Tardema [2021])

Lewis R. Gordon, "Jews of Colour: Race and Afro-Jewishness," lecture at Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck (University of London), June 26, 2018

- and/or -

-----, "Rarely Kosher: Studying Jews of Color in North America," American Jewish History 100 no. 1 (January 2016)

Background/Supplementary/Further Reading:

Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (2018), ch. 2: "State/Nation: A Case Study of the Racial State: Jews as Internal Minority in England" [ebook via McMaster Library]

RaceB4Race conference series and professional network community: Event Archive

Marc Dollinger, Black Power, Jewish Politics. Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s (2018), ch. 4: "Turning Inward: Black Power and Jewish Youth Movements" [will be added to Mills Course Reserves]

Sander Gilman, "The Jewish Nose. Are Jews White? Or, The History of the Nose Job," chap. 7 of The Jew's Body (1991) [ebook via McMaster Library]

Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color. European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (1998), esp. chap. 5: "Looking Jewish, Seeing Jews." [ebook via McMaster Library]

Sarah Imhoff, "Race and American Judaism" (updated May 2023), Oxford Bibliographies.

Eric Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness. Jews, Race, and American Identity (2006) [ebook via McMaster Library]

Ella Shohat, "The Split Arab/Jew Figure Revisited," Patterns of Prejudice 54 (2020), nos. 1-2