OVERVIEW

his course provides students with the critical tools to revisit the history of Christianities through the lens of race, racial thought, processes of racialization, racism, and anti-racism. Drawing on the methodological contributions of racial studies and the racial turn from a transatlantic perspective, the lectures aim to challenge the cliché of Christianity as an inherently universalist faith, indifferent to racial hierarchies and representations. “Race” will instead be analysed as a cultural construct that Christian actors helped to co-produce, redefine over time, and ultimately subject to critique.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The objective of this course is for students to demonstrate mastery of the themes and methods of contemporary Catholic Church history, with a focus on religious cultures as meaning systems capable of feeding rhetoric, ideological schemes, symbolic forms, cults, liturgies, and social practices with inextricable political value. The goal is to become acquainted with the historical-religious specialist lexicon; to orient oneself with regard to the international historiographical debate on the history of Catholicism in the age of secularization; and to develop appropriate techniques of reading and critical interpretation of sources for the history of the Church through seminars or written reports.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD