ANTH 428. Saints and Mediation in Latin America.

This course examines religion in Latin America by means of a focus on the cult of the saints, a phenomenon central to religious, cultural and social life across the continent and key to the endurance of the institutional Catholic Church. Material in the course addresses various interpretive frames (e.g., historical, political economic, psychoanalytic, semiotic) in exploring how worship of the saints has marked Latin American society and culture, shaping sensibilities, sociality, nationalism, race, class, gender, and sexuality. The course also enables a comprehensive examination of Catholicism as both 'lived religion' and as shaped by the institutional Catholic Church.