Defining the Moral Body: Sex, Race, and Gender in Religion

What is the ideal, moral body in a given culture? How does it perform? What does it look like? How does it survive in a pluralistic, global religious society? Are there multiple and/or shifting ideals? In this course, we will consider the ways religious discourses and practices have been used to assign meanings to the body and its activities. Through an exploration of varied religious contexts across historical time, we will interrogate how specific religious cultures have defined the boundaries of moral bodies via regulations concerning "appropriate" sexual, gendered, and racial performance. By examining the relationship between religious vocabularies--such as immorality, primitivism, and divine imperative--the racialization and gendering of bodies in the modern era, social taboos, and more, we will access broader questions regarding how religious discourses dictate and regulate the moral body.Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 unit.