HI 205 Religion and Revolution

From the ongoing struggle against the permissiveness of sexual harassment waged by the “Me Too Movement,” to the robust pro-life movement, to the calls for transgender rights, the legacies of the feminist as well as gay liberation movements, and the criticisms levied against these struggles are still salient and even disputed in political life today. Among those voices, religious leaders continue to passionately debate these issues using theological arguments to undermine and/or advocate for women’s, gay, and trans peoples’ liberation. Considering this story from the Catholic perspective, this course considers how Catholics engaged with these movements often vehemently debating, and sometimes embracing, the “new woman” of the 1920s, contraception, second-wave feminism, gay liberation, and abortion. This course will offer students the chance to engage with the longer history of feminist and LGBTQ movements in the twentieth century, while at the same time immersing them in how Catholics responded to historic debates about gender and sexuality that shaped political and cultural life in this era.

Credits

3

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

This course is being offer currently as CIT/CSP 209. We want to crosslist it with History. This course will be a new course for History and we need a History number for it.