Jennifer Graber

Please check back for updates.

In this graduate reading seminar, we will study the historiography of religion in the United States, including classic works in the field and works by contemporary scholars. The course surveys scholarship based on a variety of methods, including history, anthropology, ethnohistory, and sociology. 

Texts:

Texts include, but are not limited to:

• David Hall's  Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice (1997)
• Jon Butler's, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (1992)
• Robert A. Orsi's, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (1985)
• Kathy Brekus's, Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America (2013)
• Edward J. Curtis's, The Burden of Black Religion (2008)
• Tracy Fessenden's, Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature (2006)
• Saba Mahmood's, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (2011)

The Signature Course (UGS 302 and 303) introduces first-year students to the university’s academic community through the exploration of new interests. The Signature Course is your opportunity to engage in college-level thinking and learning.

Please see the graduate coordinator for more information.

The Signature Course (UGS 302 and 303) introduces first-year students to the university’s academic community through the exploration of new interests. The Signature Course is your opportunity to engage in college-level thinking and learning.

Please check back for updates.

Before European colonization, the North American continent featured myriad Indian nations practicing many different religious traditions and ceremonies. In this course, we will examine the religious traditions of several American Indian groups: the Pueblos of the American Southwest, the Wendats of the eastern Woodlands, and the Lakotas of the Plains. We will look at the myths and rituals that composed these nations’ religious identities. We will then examine the ways that contact with Europeans affected their religious beliefs and practices. In turn, we will study how Native American communities have transformed old practices and fashioned new ones since those initial contacts. Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to see the diversity among American Indian groups and the way in which religious ideas and practices serve living, changing communities of people. 

TEXTS:

• Marmon Silko, Ceremony
• Martin, The Land Looks After Us: A History of Native American Religion
• Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks
• Seeman, The Huron-Wendat Feast of the Dead

GRADING:

• Papers – 40%
• Exams – 30%
• Participation – 10%
• Final project – 20%

The Signature Course (UGS 302 and 303) introduces first-year students to the university’s academic community through the exploration of new interests. The Signature Course is your opportunity to engage in college-level thinking and learning.

This class explores the history of religions in the United States with a focus on changing ideas about and experiences of religious freedom. We will look at colonial-era precedents for church-state relations and accommodations for religious minorities, as well as new formulations of these arrangements in the early American republic. We will track efforts to protect religious practices by groups including Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Nation of Islam, and evangelical Protestants.  

 

Texts

Sehat, The Myth of American Religious Freedom

 

Grading

Short papers and unit exams

 

Description:

In this graduate reading seminar, we will study the historiography of religion in the United States, including classic works in the field and works by contemporary scholars. The course surveys scholarship based on a variety of methods, including history, anthropology, ethnohistory, and sociology. 

  Texts: Texts include, but are not limited to, David Hall's  Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice (1997), Jon Butler's, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (1992), Robert A. Orsi's, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (1985), Kathy Brekus's, Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America (2013), Edward J. Curtis's, The Burden of Black Religion (2008),  Tracy Fessenden's, Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature (2006) and Saba Mahmood's, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (2011).

This class explores how religious people and communities in the United States affirm their worldviews, understand the ethical life, engage in ritual acts, and organize their communal relations. It also looks at the way the American social environment has shaped these practitioners and their communities. In particular, this class explores an ongoing tension: the dominance achieved by majority religious groups and the religious diversity that marks the population and is protected by law. We will observe how this particularly American dynamic shapes religious communities. We will explore this tension through a historically organized survey of majority and minority religious groups. We begin with the continent’s original diversity in its hundreds of Native American traditions. We then move to dominant varieties of Protestant Christianity in relation to smaller groups, including colonial-era Jews, upstart Mormons, newly immigrated Catholics, African-American believers, and more recently arrived immigrants who practice Hinduism and Islam. While the class cannot cover the entire history of religion in United States history, it offers students greater historical understanding and tools for analyzing the ongoing dynamics of religious dominance and religious diversity in this country.

 

Grading

4 short exams (15% each for 60%)short paper (10%)mapping assignment (10%)final short essay (20%)

 

Texts

Daniel K. Richter, “War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience, ” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Oct., 1983), 528-559.Jonathan Sarna, “Colonial Beginnings” from American Judaism: A HistoryJames Homer Williams, “An Atlantic Perspective on the Jewish Struggle for Rights and Opportunities in Brazil, New Netherland, and New York,” from The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West.S. Scott Rohrer, “An American Exodus: Mormons and the Westward Trek,” from Wandering Souls: Protestant Migrations in America, 1630-1865. Paul Harvey, “Day of Jubilee: Black Churches from Emancipation to the Era of Jim Crow,” from Through the Storm, Through the Night: A History of African American ChristianitySylvester Johnson, “The Rise of Black Ethnics: The Ethnic Turn in African American Religions,” from Religion and American Culture, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Summer 2010), 125-163Vasudha Narayanan, “Hinduism in Pittsburgh: Creating the South Indian ‘Hindu’ Experience in the United States,” from The Life of HinduismSusan Slyomovics, “The Muslim World Day Parade and ‘Storefront’ Mosques of New York City,” from Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe

This seminar engages recent scholarly on religion and empire in several historical moments, including the ancient Mediterranean world, the early modern period in Europe and South Asia, and colonial episodes in the Americas. Key texts include David Chidester’s Empire of Religion: Imperialism and Comparative Religion (2014) as well as case studies from around the globe. Students will write comparative essays in which they put materials from their area of expertise into conversation with other moments in the history of religion and empire. 

 

The history of the American West includes the stories of American Indians, Anglo-American and African American settlers, as well as immigrants from Asia and Latin America. These diverse communities have brought an array of religious traditions and practices to the area and to their contacts with each other. The region has also played a key role in the development of several religious movements, including Mormonism and Pentecostalism. Focused on inter-religious contact and the connections between religion, race, and, gender, the class surveys religion in the American West from the pre-colonial period through the present. 

 

Texts: 

Maffly-Kipp, Laurie. Religion and Society in Frontier California.

Sutton, Matthew Avery. Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America. 

Wenger, Tisa. We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom

 

Grading:

Papers – 40%

Exams – 30%

Participation – 10%

Final project – 20%

Before European colonization, the North American continent featured myriad Indian nations practicing many different religious traditions and ceremonies. In this course, we will examine the religious traditions of several American Indian groups: the Pueblos of the American Southwest, the Wendats of the eastern Woodlands, and the Lakotas of the Plains. We will look at the myths and rituals that composed these nations’ religious identities. We will then examine the ways that contact with Europeans affected their religious beliefs and practices. In turn, we will study how Native American communities have transformed old practices and fashioned new ones since those initial contacts. Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to see the diversity among American Indian groups and the way in which religious ideas and practices serve living, changing communities of people. 

 

Readings may include:

Marmon Silko, Ceremony

Martin, The Land Looks After Us: A History of Native American Religion

Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks

Seeman, The Huron-Wendat Feast of the Dead

 

Grading

Papers – 40%

Exams – 30%

Participation – 10%

Final project – 20%

Please check back for updates.

In this graduate reading seminar, we will study the historiography of religion in the United States, including classic works in the field and works by contemporary scholars. The course surveys scholarship based on a variety of methods, including history, anthropology, ethnohistory, and sociology. 

Texts:

Texts include, but are not limited to:

• David Hall's  Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice (1997)
• Jon Butler's, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (1992)
• Robert A. Orsi's, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (1985)
• Kathy Brekus's, Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America (2013)
• Edward J. Curtis's, The Burden of Black Religion (2008)
• Tracy Fessenden's, Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature (2006)
• Saba Mahmood's, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (2011)

Please check back for updates.

Course description:

In this course, we will examine the religious traditions of several American Indians groups: the Pueblos of the American Southwest, various groups who inhabited the eastern Woodlands, the Lakotas of the Northern Plains, and several groups which have inhabited the place we now call Texas. We will look at the myths and rituals that composed these Indian nations’ religious identities. We will then examine the way in which contact with Europeans affected their religious beliefs and practices. In turn, we will study the way in which American Indian communities transformed old practices and fashioned new ones since those initial contacts. Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to see the diversity among American Indian groups and the way in which religious ideas and practices serve living, changing communities of people. 

All of the class readings relate to American Indian history, culture, and religion. A selection includes:

 

Richard Erdoes, American Indian Myths and Legends

Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

Joel Martin, The Land Looks After Us: A History of Native American Religion

John Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks

Eric Seeman, The Huron-Wendat Feast of the Dead

 

Grading

4 papers (25% each)

In this graduate seminar, we will consider the intersection of religion and violence in United States history, including but not limited to episodes of “religious violence” and “violent religion.” We will begin with a survey of the scholarship on religion and violence, including groundbreaking works on Jonestown and September 11. We will then consider scholarship focused on several themes, including religion and sanctioned violence, new religious movements, and personal religious experience. Because United States history is a story of global contacts, we will also include considerations of religion and violence in the colonial era and more recent political developments throughout North and South America.

BOOKS 

The State of the Field

Salvation and Suicide: An Interpretation of Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown (first ed., 1991), David Chidester, Indiana University Press; Revised edition (October 16, 2003), ISBN-10: 025321632X, ISBN-13: 978-0253216328

Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, Third Edition, Completely Revised (2003), Mark Juergensmeyer, University of California, Paperback, ISBN: 9780520240117

The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (2009), William T Cavanaugh, Oxford University Press, ISBN13: 9780195385045ISBN10: 0195385047

From Jeremiad to Jihad: Religion, Violence, and America (2012), John D. Carlson (Editor), Jonathan H. Ebel (Editor), University of California, Paperback, ISBN: 9780520271661

Religion and Sanctioned Violence (ie. war) in North America

Bonfires of Culture: Franciscans, Indigenous Leaders, and the Inquisition in Early Mexico, 1524-1540, Patricia Lopes Don, University of Oklahoma Press (2010), ISBN-10: 0806140496, ISBN-13: 978-0806140490

The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity, Jill Lepore, Vintage (1999), ISBN-10: 0375702628, ISBN-13: 978-0375702624

Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War, Harry S. Stout, Penguin (2007), ISBN-10: 0143038761

Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy, Joseph Kosek, Columbia University Press (2009), ISBN-10: 0231144180, ISBN-13: 978-0231144186

Violence and New Religious Movements

The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South, Patrick Mason, Oxford University Press, USA (2011), ISBN-10: 019974002X, ISBN-13: 978-0199740024

How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven's Gate, Catherine Wessinger, Seven Bridges Pr Llc (2000), ISBN-10: 1889119245, ISBN-13: 978-1889119243

Violence and Personal Religious Experience

Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism, Jason C. Bivins, Oxford University Press (2008), ISBN-10: 0195340817, ISBN-13: 978-0195340815

Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint, R. Andrew Chesnut, Oxford University Press (2012), ISBN-10: 0199764654, ISBN-13: 978-0199764655

Moving Outside United States Boundaries

Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala under General Efrain Rios Montt 1982-1983, Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Oxford University Press (2011), ISBN-10: 0199844771, ISBN-13: 978-0199844777

City of God: Christian Citizenship in Postwar Guatemala, Kevin O'Neill, University of California Press (2009), ISBN-10: 0520260635, ISBN-13: 978-0520260634