This upper-level course examines how religious traditions and communities play a significant role at the national, transnational, and international levels specifically in the aftermath of the demise of metanarratives as well as the wreckage and theoretical bankruptcy of several paradigms such as liberalism and communism. In dialogue a wide range of monographs and articles focusing on North America, South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and South America, the course studies how religious beliefs, practices, and communities contribute to the formation of conflicts, resolutions, and consolidations among various nations across the world over the course of the past few centuries. Religion has proven to be a persistent phenomenon, not only in individuals’ lives but also in the public sphere and international politics. Despite predictions secularist intellectuals made since the late 18th century, not only did religion refuse to fade from the scene, but it also played a significant role in international communications, confrontations, and conflicts. Across the world, religious traditions participate actively in social organizations, political bodies, and international affairs.nnStudents evaluate these developments through the work of major theorists in international relations and the study of religion, as well as historians and experts of area studies, including Talal Asad, Beth Baron, Asef Bayat, Saba Mahmoud, Richard King, John Mearsheimer, Rashid Khalidi, Gustavo Gutierrez, Mahmoud Mamdani, Elizabeth Nugent, and Christian Smith. Using historical, sociological, anthropological, political philosophy, international relations, and religious studies approaches, this course studies the roles that religions, including Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, play in international affairs. In this course, we will examine religion not to provide a normative judgment about the nature and role of faith in society but to indicate the functions and influence that religions, as sociopolitical phenomena, have in societies, nations, and international relations. The course will also help us acquire a better understanding of some of the most bitter human catastrophes in the past century in the Balkans, Ireland, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Palestine, and Rwanda.nnAssignments are structured to build upper-level competencies expected in Religious Studies, History, and International Relations: students analyze ethical and moral arguments in primary texts; compare and interpret representations of religious lives and practices; deconstruct and critique familiar binaries such as East/West, mystic/political, and religious/secular; and design a research-based podcast that advances an intersectional, theoretically informed argument about religion in modern and contemporary international conflicts.
