Professor: Xhercis Mendez

M - 12:00 pm - 1:59 pm

Are binary conceptions of the human and the body presupposed when we perform gender analyses? This course examines the usefulness of gender as a cross-cultural category of analysis from the standpoint of Afrolatine/diasporic religions and non-western ritual practices such as Afrocuban Santería, Winti, Yoruba, Ifá, Native American, and Mesoamerican indigenous practices - practices that trouble canonized approaches to gender research and knowledge production. Should practices like altar-building, initiation, and ritual possession be considered “queer” or forms of “gender-crossing,” Students will be exposed to key concepts in decolonial theory and to the dynamic, fluid, and expansive conceptions of gender, the body and of the human being activated and made available within these religious practices. The course will provide a theoretical foundation from which to examine in what ways these non-western polytheistic religions create the conditions for culturally specific forms of contestation and reconfigurations of normative relations of power. In so doing, the course asks students to examine the assumptions and tendencies within feminist, and queer theory to construe religiosity as antithetical to liberatory and decolonial movement and struggle.