Violence and the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Nationalism in Comparative Context

This course offers graduate students an opportunity to engage anthropological, historical, and philosophical approaches to religion and violence in our times. How do we understand (without naturalizing nor justifying), the conjunctions of violence, religion, and nationalism that we see in a wide array of world locales? Students will gain tools for knowledge production on topics including sacrifice, scapegoating, martyrdom, biopolitics and necropolitics, persecution, states of emergency, and 'bare life'. Most major religions will be included, as will material on indigenous subjects of violence during the long histories of empire. Material will also allow us to examine humanitarianism and 'just peace'--movements which are often religiously-inflected.