Course Schedule and Catalog

Long Title: ZION: REALITY, IMAGINATION, INTERSECTION

Department: Religion

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Seminar

Distribution Group: Distribution Group I

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This course explores how the concept of "Zion" has been imagined and reimagined across diverse cultural, historical, and artistic contexts. By examining Zion's multifaceted nature—from its origins in Jewish religious texts to its adoption and transformation in Black, Rastafarian, Protestant, and Palestinian contexts—we will engage with fundamental questions about homeland, belonging, sovereignty, utopia, and dystopia. Rather than approaching Zion solely as a geographical location or political project, this course investigates it as a powerful cultural symbol that has inspired artistic creation, political movements, and theological interpretation across centuries and continents. By pairing canonical texts with works that complicate and challenge dominant narratives, we will develop critical perspectives on how Zion functions simultaneously as a religious ideal, a promised land, a political project, a concrete place, as well as a site of contested sovereignty and displacement. Cross-list: JWST 203.