Material Culture and Lived Religions in US Latinx Communities

This course will focus on key examples of the study of lived religion and material culture among a variety of US Latinx religious traditions. We will look at several short case studies including food traditions and visual/artistic/material traditions within specific Latinx communities to explore how studying material culture can give scholars greater insight into understanding lived religious experiences among Latinx folks. Students will gain tools to be conversant in the basic theories and methods that are used in studying religious material cultures and lived religions and learn how to apply them to the larger field of US Latinx religious history. This course will push students to expand ideas of what “religion” means within these communities and will encourage students to reflect on their own personal encounters with Latinx religious material cultures. The course will encourage a creative project within the student’s community as the final project with also a final paper option.

Humor, Laughter, Foolishness: Performing Love, Resilience and Resistance

To be able to laugh, to have humor and to be foolish are all tremendous forms of resistance, of showing love/compassion and affirming life in a time where depression, anger, sadness and disasters are mounting. This course follows a Christian Russian tradition called Sacred Fools and intends to be a practical-theoretical way of engaging humor, laughter and foolishness through play in worship and preaching forms. The course will take on Latinxs resources of laughter, humor and foolishness. Together, we will engage play as a fundamental way of living our faith and daily lives in our communities.

Migración, desplazamiento y trauma en las comunidades latinx / Migration, displacement, and trauma in Latinx communities

(Bilingual class Spanish/English; lectures and presentations during class time will be delivered in Spanish but students will have the option of submitting written assignments in English or Spanish).

Descripción:
El curso explorará los efectos de la migración y el desplazamiento en el bienestar psicológico, emocional y espiritual de las comunidades latinx. La migración es una experiencia que se caracteriza por el desarraigo y la ruptura de lazos socioculturales con el propósito de dejar el país de origen para establecerse en otro. Esta experiencia por sí misma, evoca el dolor y sufrimiento asociados con la pérdida y la reubicación. Cuando la experiencia migratoria se acompaña de otros eventos traumáticos (i.e. crisis sociopolíticas, abuso físico, pobreza, depresión, guerra, discriminación, etc.), las dificultades y retos que las comunidades migrantes experimentan pueden reverberar por generaciones. A través de este curso, las personas participantes tendrán la oportunidad de articular las historias migratorias de sus propias comunidades latinx; los efectos que estás historias han producido en el funcionamiento de su comunidad; y de proponer estrategias que contribuyan a su restauración y crecimiento.

Description:
This course will explore the effects of migration and displacement on the psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being of Latinx people and communities. Migration is an experience that is characterized by people’s uprooting and the disruption of socio-cultural connections for the purposes of leaving one’s home country to resettle in another. Such an experience evokes the pain and suffering associated with losses and relocation. Yet, when migration experiences are accompanied by other traumatic events (i.e., socio-political crisis, physical abuse, poverty, depression, war, discrimination, etc.), the difficulties and challenges migrant communities experience may reverberate for generations. Throughout this course, students will have the opportunity to explore the migration histories of their communities; the effects on their community functioning; and to propose specific strategies that may bring healing and growth.

Esperanza, Play and Practice

Gustavo Gutiérrez speaks of the spiritual journey of God’s people as the act of drinking from our own wells. This course explores Latinx communities’ inner resources as practices that forge hope. It introduces students to theologies, philosophies and systems of hope and future within, but not limited to, the Christian tradition. We will talk about play and collective patterns in religious systems as well as the psychological implications for the individual. A sustainable hope refers to a hope that can be maintained and traditioned. We will look at questions such as, how does one flourish amid crisis and hardship? What are the implications of articulating a responsible and sustainable hope? How do we engage a plurality of religious traditions in collaboration with materializing hope? At the end of the class the student should be able to define and map a system of hope for their religious/spiritual context.

Latinx Populisms: The Virgin of Guadalupe & the Holy Spirit as Symbols of Popular Sovereignty

Though today the US media depicts populism as a species of white supremacist nationalism, evangelicalism has always been populist, even when and where it has been interracial. Accordingly, many Latinx adherents in the US vote in populist ways, supporting Donald Trump in the 2020 election in surprisingly large numbers. In this class we investigate why Latinx Evangelicals embraced Trumpism. To do so, we trace/compare the impact of the age of revolutions on the development of populist versions of Mexico’s Virgin of Guadalupe and American Pentecostalism’s Holy Spirit. Students develop an appreciation for the forces that shape lived religion; populist religion is a powerful source of sovereignty for people in dominated social positions. Students will be encouraged to strategize and develop messaging which empowers faith leaders to speak more knowledgably about anti- establishmentarianism, political stakes, and opportunities.

Using Latinx Material Religion to Enrich our Theological Thought

Since its very beginnings Christianity has struggled with materiality, that is, that which is sensed, experienced, or performed in exchange and “in the flesh” (think, for example, of the issue between divine presence and idolatry). Across history the ‘material’ has been opposed (and many times relegated), for instance, to the “doctrinal”, the “biblical”, and the “spiritual”. However, on the one hand, for local Christianities, and especially in Latinx contexts, the divine, the human, the world, and everything in between are meaningful through material religion, that is, relational faith through images, objects, spaces, and practices. On the other, many Latinxs are intensely religious and nuanced reflections and critiques have developed regarding these beliefs and practices under the rubric Latinx theology. By exploring Latinx scholarship on material religion (Antonio Alonso, Jennifer Scheper-Hughes, Socorro Castañeda-Liles, Héctor Varela Ríos, and others) and concepts these scholars have articulated (e.g., anti-consumerism, affect, decoloniality, and gender), we will explore how core Latinx theological understanding (around sacramentality, devotion, or theological anthropology) can be enriched by a material-religious approach.

Religious Movements from the Margins: The Prosperity Gospel in the Latinx Context

The U.S. religious landscape has been shaped by the powerful influence of what has become known as “prosperity gospel” or “prosperity theology.” No doubt that money has been “close to the heart of all significant developments in the history of North American Protestantism,” as historian Mark Noll reminds us. In this class we will examine the development of key ideas in Christian history that helped to create a relationship between Christianity and money. These ideas though always fraught with tension and contradictions have been interpreted and understood by a variety of religious figures that in the last one hundred years have created a prosperity theology that continues to challenge the mainline/historical Christian Churches around the globe. We will then focus our attention on key prosperity gospel preachers in Latin America and their impact on U.S. Latinx churches.