This course equips students to understand the religious roots of modern formations of gender, sexuality, and kinship, focusing in particular on Judaism, Christianity, and New Religious Movements. Topics we will cover include: the transformation of traditional religious structures into the modern “religion of romantic love,” the reshaping of religious practices within the modern nuclear family and its gendered division of labour, the persistent religious entanglements within not only normative but also queer and transgressive gender performances and kinship structures, the political asymmetries within which different religious modernities emerge, and the role of literature in preserving religious enchantment in modernity.
This course equips students to understand the religious roots of modern formations of gender, sexuality, and kinship, focusing in particular on Judaism, Christianity, and New Religious Movements. Topics we will cover include: the transformation of traditional religious structures into the modern “religion of romantic love,” the reshaping of religious practices within the modern nuclear family and its gendered division of labour, the persistent religious entanglements within not only normative but also queer and transgressive gender performances and kinship structures, the political asymmetries within which different religious modernities emerge, and the role of literature in preserving religious enchantment in modernity.
