Alternative Ontologies: Religion in the Pluriverse

A course exploring competing ontologies and attempts to imagine alternative worlds and forms of life. Readings would draw from anthropology, philosophy, Black studies, Indigenous studies, and religious studies, including thinkers such as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo Kohn, Calvin Warren, Jane Bennett, Karen Barad, J.Z. Smith, Foucault, Latour, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. The course would examine religion's role both in stabilizing dominant ontologies and in imagining disruptive or alternative ones, while asking whether the desire for alternative worlds is itself theological.