Modern Religious History

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Scholarly fields are like sustained conversations, and in this seminar we hope to help you enter the ongoing discussion about the historical study of modern religion. Considering both classic approaches and recent innovations, we discuss a wide range of books dealing with the history of modern religion, beginning with global histories and then focusing more on the United States. The instructors hope to encourage reflection about what different spatial scales-local, national, and transnational-obscure and illumine. Along the way, we engage multiple approaches, including social, environmental, cultural, political, and intellectual history. We end the course by returning to historiographical issues and invite seminar participants to summarize their own thinking and propose how they think we should change the scholarly conversation in the years ahead.