Exodus: Freedom in the Modern Black and Jewish Religious Imaginations

A symbol of the journey from exile and captivity, slavery and oppression to liberation and freedom, the story of the Biblical Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt has helped many communities articulate narratives of suffering and redemption. In this class, we will examine Black and Jewish confrontations with catastrophic conditions in modernity and try to understand the distinctive and yet paralleled ways the Exodus narrative has helped these communities undertake projects of racial, ethnic, and collective struggle for freedom and cultural self-transformation.