REL 2250 - A History of Satan

Credits: 4
In this course, we use the academic perspectives of religious studies, history, and political analyses to understand how people have imagined the devil as a character, a lived presence, and a political-spiritual threat. Readings will focus primarily on the modern era in the Americas, and, in particular, the United States’ emphasis on the demonic. Students will learn about varied case studies such as the Salem Witch Trials, slave insurrections, Cold War Era apocalypticism, the Nation of Islam’s figurations of the white devil, the satanic panic in the 1980s, Satanists’ religious freedom court cases, and how contemporary queer performances appropriate and adapt diabolical symbols. Together, we will ask how ideas about the devil, the demonic, and hell have shaped modern politics. A careful consideration of the devil offers new ways to critically analyze the emergence of modern nationalism, forms of racial supremacy, and ideas about sexuality, masculinity, and femininity.

McDaniel Plan: Social, Cultural, and Historical Understanding; Multicultural