Teaching

Our students are amazing! Teaching brings tremendous joy and discovery. The goals of my courses are to teach students how to critically read, think, assess, and understand people from a wide variety of cultures, traditions, political persuasions, religions, and artistic expressions. He is passionate trying to help students understand people, movements, and traditions on their own plane of reference from a vantage point that is both critical and fair-minded. Below are just a few of the courses he loves teaching at Claremont McKenna College, the Claremont Colleges, and The Claremont Graduate University. For more about the CMC and 5Cs Intercollegiate Religious Studies Program in Claremont see the website he co-created with Luis Sales at Scripps College: https://colleges.claremont.edu/religious-studies/

PROFESSOR ESPINOSA’S COURSE OFFERINGS

UNDERGRADUATE COURSES

FHS 10 – Mystics, Prophets, and Social Change. This reading and writing seminar introduces students to some of the most important religious and secular mystics, prophets, and social radicals in human history. It explores how and why their ideas and critiques of God, sin, justice, and/or salvation positively and negatively shaped their attitude towards religion, politics, and calls for revolutionary social change. We also explore why many of their ideas continue to shape religion, culture, and politics around the world to this day. Thinkers analyzed include Moses, Confucius, The Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Mohammad, Joan of Arc, Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Bartolomé de las Casas, Angelina Emile Grimké, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Chairman Mao, William James, Theodore Herzl, Walter Rauschenbusch, Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Daly, Leonardo Boff, Billy Graham, Oprah Winfrey, Angela Davis, and others.

FHS 10 – Race: A History. This course will examine the history of racism, racial prejudice, and discrimination around the world and in the U.S. In particular, it will examine the historical development of racism with particular focus on the post-1800 period. Special attention will be paid to the intellectual and scientific origins of racism and racial views in Europe and North America, with additional reading on Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The course will explore racialization among Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and Shinto practitioners and racial-ethnic minority prejudice. It will conclude by analyzing how racial-ethnic minorities have attempted to resist racism and social marginalization, whether or not race is a myth as some have argued, and what strategies one can adopt to overcome racism.

37. History of World Christianity. Explores the history of Christianity from Jesus to the present in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Focus on key debates and controversies over the canon of Scripture, orthodoxy versus heresy, the papacy, church-state conflicts, the crusades, Christian-Muslim-Jewish debates, the Protestant Reformation, Christian feminism, liberalism, fundamentalism, evangelicalism and pentecostalism, liberation theology, and key struggles over missions, colonialism, and indigenization.

83. Hip-Hop, Religion and Revolution. The seminar critically examines the revolutionary intersections of religion, race, and Hip-Hop. It explores how Black and to a lesser extent Latino, Muslim, and Jewish Hip-Hop, R&B, and other music artists have drawn on their racial-ethnic and/or religious identities, upbringings, indigenous knowledge, and racialized experiences to shape their music and messages to the masses from the 1960s to the present and how they call for revolutionary social change in their opposition to anti-Black racism and other forms of discrimination in society. It also explores how they have sought to transform the social construction their racial identities and used their superstar power and platforms to promote racial justice and change. The class will be divided up into three parts. Artists critically analyzed include Mahalia Jackson, Sam Cooke, Nina Simone, Tupac, NWA, Ice-Cube, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, Drake, Latifah, The Weekend, Usher, DJ. Khaled, Lacrae, Talib Kweli, Eminem, and Daddy Yankee, among others. We will explore two or more artists per week through scholarly books and articles, biographies, song lyrics, and music videos.

84. Religion, Race, and the Civil Rights Movement. Examines the influence of religion on the origins and development of white supremacy and the pan-ethnic civil rights movement in the U.S. by focusing on the African American, Mexican American/Chicano, and American Indian (AIM) struggles. It will analyze how Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, and Native Americans such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, César Chávez, Ralph Abernathy, Reies López Tijerina, Dolores Huerta, Dennis Banks, and others drew on their religious ideologies, symbols, texts, and counter-narratives in their struggles against white supremacy, segregation, political disenfranchisement, and for civil rights and social justice. Particular focus will be paid to the post-1950 struggles.

125. Race and Religion in Hollywood Film. This course critically examines how Blacks, Latinos/as, and Native Americans have been depicted and socially constructed in Hollywood-distributed films over the past century. We analyze and interpret how film can function as a vehicle for racial, religious, political, gender, and social commentary, conscientization, protest, and reconciliation. After briefly examining film structure and screenwriting, the course analyzes the intersection of race and religion via leaders, traditions, motifs, and sensibilities in genres such as: Science Fiction (Avatar), Action-Adventure (Indiana Jones Temple of Doom, Live & Let Die), Westerns (Conquest of Cochise, Magnificent 7), Drama (Birth of a Nation, Mi Familia, Colors, Malcolm X, César Chávez, Selma), Comedies (Sister Act), and Animation (Pocahontas). We interpret film as a cultural canvas that imparts not only the writer and director’s vision about the social construction of race, religion and society, but also those of the masses.

138. American Religious History. Examines American religious history from the pre-Columbian period to the present. It explores the origins, development, and key conflicts and turning points in the history of Native American, Liberal and Mainline Protestant, Catholic, Fundamentalist, Evangelical, Pentecostal, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Mormon, Spiritualist, and other religious traditions. It will pay attention to struggles over religion, race, slavery, civil rights, gender and sexuality, and social reform.

136. Religion in Contemporary America. Explores the religious, spiritual, and sociological trends and developments in American religions since the 1960s with particular attention to race, ethnicity, gender, church-state debates, moral issues, and politics.

153. Religion and American Politics. Explores major debates and controversies in American religions and politics from the colonial period to the present. Special attention will be paid to debates about the impact of religion on the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, African-American and Latino Civil Rights movements, the Christian Right, Church-State debate, and religion and political views of women, seculars, Blacks, Latinos, Jews, and Muslims.

166b. Religion, Politics and Global Violence. Examines the intersection of religion, politics, and global violence. It explores how Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists have used the name of God(s), religious history, and/or religious ideology to justify war, acts of violence, and terrorism. It analyzes external violence between world religions (e.g., Hindu-Muslim) and internal violence within religions (e.g., Protestant-Catholic, Shia-Sunni). It explores religion and cultural nationalism; religious discrimination, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. It focuses on historical and contemporary religious wars and religiously inspired violence in (1) the Middle East – Israel/Palestine, (2) the Balkans – Bosnia & Serbia, (3) Iraq & Iran, (4) Afghanistan, (5) Northern Ireland, (6) U.S., (7) Sudan, (8) Rwanda, (9) Sri Lanka, and (10) India.

171. Religion and Film. Employs critical race, gender, and post-colonial theories and frameworks to analyze the role of religious symbols, rhetoric, values, and world-views in American film. After briefly examining film genre, structure, and screenwriting, the course will explore religious sensibilities in different genres such as: Historical Epic (10 Commandments, Gandhi, The Message), Action/Adventure (Indiana Jones & Temple of Doom, Pocahontas), Science Fiction (Star Wars, Matrix), Comedy (Heaven Can Wait, Dogma), Drama (Exorcist, The Mission), Westerns/War (Platoon, Pale Rider, 3:10 to Yuma), Musicals (Jesus Christ Superstar, Yentl), and Politics (Romero, Malcolm X).

173. U.S. Latino Religions and Politics. Examines the critical impact of religion on Latino politics and civic activism in the United States. Special attention will be paid to religion and the Chicano movement, César Chávez¹s farmworkers struggle, Reies López Tijerina¹s land grant struggle, the Sanctuary movement, and the Elián González controversy. It will also how Latino Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Evangelical, and Pentecostal religious affiliation shapes party affiliation, presidential voting, and church-state and social attitudes.  Offered every third year.

174. Religion and the American Presidency. Explores how religious symbols, traditions, and worldviews shaped the Founding Fathers and the domestic and foreign policies of presidents Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr. Special attention will be paid to civil religion, religious pluralism, and key theoretical interpretations of religion and the presidency.

GRADUATE COURSES

463. U.S. Religions, 1870-Present. CGU HC. The course will examine U.S. Religions from 1870-Present with special attention to American religious historiography; religion, race, and civil rights; religion, race, and politics; Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism, Catholicism; African American, Latino, and Asian American religious expressions; the impact of American Christianity on Global Christianity; and historical and contemporary sociology of religion, generational shifts, and religious diversity and pluralism.

419. Race and Ethnicity in American Religions. CGU HC. This course analyzes the retelling of U.S. religious history and the new religious America in light of the histories, struggles for civil rights and liberation, and immigration trends of racial-ethnic minorities. In particular, it focuses on how the alternative narratives of African American and especially U.S. Latino and Asian American religions problematize and call for a reconceptualization of American religious history.