INFORMATION FOR COURSES OFFERED IN THE 2023-2024 ACADEMIC YEAR
Reproductive Justice - Dr. Toni Bond
Six-Week Elective Course | Tuesdays, July 11-August 15, 2023 | 6-8 p.m. Eastern Time
This course will provide an overview of the reproductive and sexual justice theory (RSJ) and framework. Beginning with the RSJ movement’s historical origins, the course will cover the theory’s grounding in Black feminist theory and the human rights framework, provide a contextual understanding of RSJ four pillars, and explore a broad range of reproductive and sexual justice issues, including contraception, abortion, sterilization, artificial reproductive technologies, surrogacy, pregnancy, pregnancy loss, childbirth, post-partum issues, and criminalization of pregnancy. We will apply an intersectional analysis that examines these issues through a critical lens that focuses on gender, race, class, and religion.
Introduction to Africana Religions - Iya Dr. Funlayo E. Wood
Six-Week Elective Course | Thursdays, January 11-February 15, 2024 | 6-8 p.m. Eastern Time
Africana Religions include indigenous traditions of Africa like those of the Akan, Yoruba, Ndebele, San, and Fon peoples, as well as related traditions of the Americas like Candomblé, Palo, Lukumi, Hooodoo, Obeah, and Haitian Vodou. In spite of factors like mass conversion to Islam and Christianity and active terrorism against Africana religions, their practice continues on the African continent, throughout the Americas, and the world.
This course will provide an introduction to the study and practice of Africana religions and will highlight topics including: concepts of God and cosmology, ways of knowing, spirit possession, ritual, ceremony, divination, magic, art, and more within a religious studies framework that employs phenomenology, anthropology of religion, and other approaches.
Attention will also be given to issues of race, class, and gender as they relate to these traditions, as well as to the historical movement of these traditions through the Transatlantic Slave Trade and, more recently, via voluntary migration and “digital travel.”
Finally, there will be an examination of the contemporary resurgence of these traditions, particularly among Black women.
Womanist Theology: A Primer - Dr. JoAnne Marie Terrell
Six-Week Core Course | Tuesdays, February 13-March 19, 2024 | 7-9 p.m. Eastern Time
This course is designed to introduce participants to the Womanist literature, discourses, and doctrines used as a source for theological reflection and flourishing.
Global Womanisms and Perspectives: Inventing Women and Subverting Gender in the African Public Sphere - Dr. Georgette Ledgister
Six-Week Elective Course | Thursdays, April 4-May 9, 2024 | 6-8 p.m. Eastern Time
This course explores themes at the intersection of gender and religion in Africa, and interrogating normative discourses that almost exclusively paint African women as victims constrained by western conceptions of gender. Focusing on the interplay of gender studies, religious studies, and womanist ethics, this course locates agency in the lived experience of ordinary African women who turn to indigenous practice to cultivate flourishing in the public sphere.
