What are the demands of democratic citizenship? When we consider the vastness of global identities, ethnicities, cultures, languages, and religions that converge in a single place like the United States, what do we expect to find? Do claims of liberty and equality find consistent expression? Or do we encounter a different reality, one in which the image of an inclusive and welcoming America hardly matches with its historical past? Responding to these questions and more, AL 210-002: Minority Religions and the American Other, explores common characteristics, popular depictions, and lived realities of minority religions in American culture with a particular focus on the contours of American citizenship and the role religion assumes in projects of empowerment and methods for disenfranchisement.
Cartoon by Joe Heller
Etched into the very fabric of its political identity, claims of religious liberty and diversity speak ideally to a both/and condition in the United States: American citizens are promised both freedom to religion (the Free Exercise Clause) and freedom from religion (the Establishment Clause). But how do Americans respond when religious minorities turn to a new God/gods (or reject the divine outright), venerate a new prophet, take more than one spouse, rely on magic or psychedelic rituals, interact with aliens, or stockpile weapons for the end of the world? What occurs when mediated representations and pop culture depictions are taken as truth? How does the narrative of America as a Christian nation impact the experience of Indigenous populations, Jews, Muslims, non-Western religions, and new religions? These very questions animate my research and drive my approach to teaching-they are the questions we will explore together in our AL 210 class!
By focusing on the long record of bigotry, intolerance, exclusion, and violence that defines the base experience of underrepresented and minority religions in the United States, we will seek to do more than unpack the dynamics that “legitimate” such conditions within a country dedicated—at least rhetorically—to equal standing, both individually and religiously. Part of our class’s aim, then, will be to chart this history in order to uncover ways to move forward, both by drawing from historical examples, as well as pursuing class-based, community engagement projects. Equally important to studying the politicization of religious identity, the limitations of citizenship rights, and the myriad ways in which Americans and American religions tolerate or fail to tolerate each other, we will also consider ways to combat intolerance in all its manifest forms. Part of this effort will include participation in a series of semester-long projects (that the class will develop) in relation to the “Building Community, Resisting Hate” Campaign being sponsored by a host of CAL departments and programs for the 2019-2020 academic year. Fortified through experiential learning opportunities that will expose AL 210 to the groups and communities we are actively studying—including planned visits to (or visitors from) an Indigenous American Learning Center, Mosque, and Synagogue—students in AL 210 will work collectively on three unique, interrelated projects designed to enhance the way we actively consider and engage with underrepresented and disenfranchised religious communities.
Photo from Sadaf Syed’s iCover: A Day in the Life of a Muslim-American COVERed Girl, which captures moments in the day-to-day lives of Muslim women, moments that the average American can relate to once they “embrace” individuals who choose to cover their hair.
Throughout the semester, students will construct an online learning guide that annotates works of art, literature, and popular culture in order to outline the nature, orientation, and meanings of religious representation, while also creating an active archive of materials that future students, scholars, or members of the community can draw from. Related to this project of representation, students in AL 210 will also be challenged to develop a critical response blog that will include original posts, reaction pieces, visual art/presentations, and vlogs, all designed to enhance student voices while also demonstrating that what we learn within the frames of the classroom prepare us to be active participants within our social, cultural, and political spheres. The blog will center on issues of Islamophobia and antisemitism, with a specific focus on drawing from elements of popular culture that either advance or intervene on religious bigotry and intolerance. Last, in connection with Days of Remembrance, the United States’ annual commemoration of the Holocaust, students in AL 210 will both hear from survivors of the Shoah, while also developing an original pop-up event to occur the last week of class to help bring attention to the horrors of the past and the continued problem of contemporary expressions of antisemitism.
Through these collective projects and class explorations, we gain insight into how religion as a social, cultural, and a human phenomenon emerges, develops, adapts, flourishes, declines, and, occasionally, disappears, helping us navigate not only the nature and limitations of religious life in American history, but also the role religion assumes in defining modes of exclusion that ultimately mark the boundaries of citizenship. Yet at the same time, we also encounter the role art and popular culture assume within oppressed communities, opening (or deconstructing) the restrictive lens of dominant American culture while empowering members of minority religious communities to be active agents in narrativizing their local conditions, participating as full political citizens, and aiding in global concerns.