Religion, Theory, and the Archive

HDS 3136 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Black and indigenous scholars have long argued that archives are often violent and dismembering, especially as the universities which house them preserve the physical and immaterial remnants of slavery and colonialism. Religious studies scholars, especially historians of religion, have attended to this quandary while sifting through archives of slavery, colonialism, conquest, and sexual violence. At Harvard, this conversation has re-emerged in unique ways through Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery: Reckoning with the Past to Understand the Present, and the question of what lies in university archives has taken center stage. This course examines these archival dilemmas and the violent hauntings of the past with an eye towards the historical study of religion in the Americas. We will read work by such scholars as Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, Solimar Otero, Toni Morrison, and more. Jointly offered in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as African and African American Studies 109 and Religion 1092.