Max Mueller, assistant professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies, will be teaching The History of African American Religious Experience (RELG, HIST, ETHN 226) during the spring semester.
This course—the only one of its kind at Nebraska—surveys the religious history of African and African Americans from the seventeenth to the early twenty-first centuries through the motif of movement—literal, metaphorical, and spiritual. The unique approach explores the religious experiences of African Americans within interrelated social, political, and religious systems.
Students study the experiences of "Exile," "Exodus," and "Zion" (or "Promised Land"), which people of African descent have endured, resisted, and initiated throughout American history. Studying the religious history of African Americans through these three interrelated themes will allow students to explore this history from different vantage points, making connections, and drawing distinctions.
Main topics include:
- the influence of African religious beliefs and practices on the creation of new diasporic African-American religious traditions
- "slave religion"
- the formation of independent black churches
- African-American Islamic traditions
- social protest movements
- religion in African-American literature
- black womanist movements
- the rise of a "black, Christian Presidency"
- "Black Lives Matter"
Registration is available via myred.nebraska.edu.
