Christianity at the Crossroads: The Global Church from the Print Revolution to the Digital Era

HDS 2343 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Most of the writing on the history of Christianity is organized around national histories and religious denominations or traditions. By contrast, this course aims to build on work by historians of all kinds, not just historians of religion, suggesting that traditional explanations of religious, social, and cultural change have undervalued the role of international networks and transnational encounters in shaping the dynamics of religious change and innovation. By looking at a selection of such international networks, and nodes and nuclei (or junction boxes) as sites of encounter among different traditions and cultures, the course will analyze patterns of change and transmission that will challenge conventional historiographies and modes of explanation. In terms of chronology, the course will concentrate predominantly on the period c.1500-2000, from the print revolution to the digital era, and will include international religious networks such as the Catholic religious orders (Jesuits), Protestant benevolent and missionary societies, migratory populations resulting from colonialism and other factors, the rise of transnational Pentecostalism, print networks, and so on. There will be opportunities for students to research religious networks and junctions of their own choosing, and to develop their own interpretation of religious change. The first half of the semester will concentrate on networks, the second part on nodes and nuclei and the third part of the semester will be devoted to student research projects.