Colgate University

First-Year Course Offerings — Fall 2022

RELG 218   Seeing, Feeling, Believing: Black Religious Thought through Visual Art and Performance
Credits1
RestrictionsInstr perm req during Drop/Add
Pre-Requisites
Co-Requisites
Core Area
Area of InquiryHuman Thought and Expression
Liberal Arts Practices

What can visual art and performance tell us about Black religion? Students explore this question by considering how historical and contemporary Black artists use mediums such as photography, painting, tactile installation, embodied movement, and sound to consider religious ideas. Students bring these creative works into conversation with scholarship in Black religious thought concerning a range of themes, including conjure/ancestral connection, Black liberation, ecstatic feeling, otherwise worlds, hope/pessimism, and the human. As a result, students gain an understanding of the profound ways that questions of religion and life meaning deeply inform and animate Black artistic and aesthetic cultural expression.