SOC 199: Global Religion Professor Asef Bayat
Want to take a course with an expert on Middle East Societies and Cultures and the Arab Spring?
Class meets Wednesdays
3-5:50pm
CRN: 39850
Course Description:
For a long time, since the late 19th Century, many social thinkers believed that the development of modern life and thinking would make religious belief and institutions outdated. Yet, the recent decades have witnessed religious resurgence of global proportion. This course focuses on the social, political, and transnational dimensions of religious revival. We discuss the worldwide rise of religious fundamentalism, and explore its implications for democratic politics, violence, and gender. We examine the rise and decline of Latin American liberation theology of the 1960s and 1970s, and discuss how the new Century has given rise to the rapid growth of global Pentacostal Christianity in Africa and Latin America, and the Jihadi movements such as the al-Qaida in the Muslim world.

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