Religion and the Anthropocene

This course examines the work of religious ideas—and ideas about religion—in relation to human interactions with and understandings of the environment. In recent years, the idea of the Anthropocene has abounded in both academic and popular literature. This course uses religion as a lens to examine the role of humans in both creating ecological destruction and efforts to repair and rework relationships with the natural world. We will engage with religious texts and interrogate the forces that have shaped religion under modernity, including the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and secularization. By the end of the semester, students will have deepened and nuanced their understandings of the notoriously vexed categories of religion and the Anthropocene.