Spring 2026
Religious Pluralism, Religious Freedom and Dialogue in the Modern World
Dates: January 26, 2026 - May 11, 2026Day/Time: Mondays; Wednesdays 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM EST
Level: 200-Level
Certificate: Global Humanities, Global Studies
Instructor: Karen Barkey, Bard College
As religion persists despite secular predictions of its downturn or demise, the modern world’s various inheritances (of colonialism and empire), the centrality of the nation-state, the paradoxes of legal dispensations, etc., make religion come alive through state and society in conflicting rather than cohesive ways. This course allows the student to understand religion and its collisions as they are filtered through the history and politics of nations and their various priorities. The course closely examines the solutions that the modern world has devised to arrest and minimize religious conflict by exploring the ideas around secularism/secularization, tolerance, pluralism, and religious freedom. Through unpacking these concepts, i.e., their aspirations and shortcomings, the course allows students to work through some recent controversies of religious conflict and cases where conflicts are managed better. The course ends by looking at dialogue to ask if, indeed, the modern world allows for inter and intra-religious dialogue, who initiates and engages in it, and how to assess the ethical framework within which this task is undertaken towards goals of building understanding and mutuality through religion for the self and community.
Credits: 4 U.S. / 8 ECTS