Carlos Ramirez-Arenas

This course examines key moments across the Americas, from the sixteenth century to the present, in which religious frameworks, discourses, and practices produced and reinforced racial and gender hierarchies. Organized geographically—moving from the Caribbean through South America to North America—we analyze how colonial institutions constituted subjects along the categories of race and gender through conquest, slavery, missionization, the Inquisition, and the government of bodies, and trace how these entangled hierarchies persisted and morphed into contemporary religious movements and debates over citizenship, sexuality, and belonging. Drawing on decolonial and critical theory, students will develop critical frameworks for understanding race and gender not as separate axes of identity but as mutually constitutive products of colonial power with enduring consequences.