Religion and Violence “Religion and violence” exists at the knotty intersection between politics, identity, and culture. A critical understanding of how and why religion has been employed to explain or justify violence is essential to becoming a responsible citizen of the world. In this course we will explore the complex relationship between religion, political economy, and violence from a global perspective. Our goal will be to deconstruct popular preconceptions of religion and violence, locate the variety of social structures that induce violence, and to develop a critical apparatus for understanding what is at stake when religion and violence intersect.

Crossroads: Religion and Race in the Americas White rock musicians have traced the origins of their musical style to the Delta blues, fixating on a myth that a young, Black musician sold his soul at a southern crossroads to learn to play the guitar. This myth portrays the success of rock as having supernatural origins, while obscuring how the recording industry appropriated and commodified the art of Black Americans. In this seminar we explore the polysemous image of the “crossroads” as an entrée into the intersecting fields of  comparative religion, humanistic economics, and critical race. We will rely on works by authors such as Gloria Anzaldúa and Toni Morrison to interrogate these fields while comparing the histories of the U.S. and Brazil. 3 hrs. sem

#blessed: American Prosperity Religion  tfw the vending machine gives you two snacks instead of one #cookies #blessed. Critics allege that thinking God cares about your personal prosperity exposes the rotting core of American late capitalism. But American nationalism is also rooted in God’s providence. How should we grapple with this American ambivalence toward prosperity and religion? In this class, we will use critical media theory to understand how capitalism cultivates a diversity of religious attitudes toward prosperity. While our focus will be contemporary media from the anglophone United States, we will explore comparable instances from Brazil and other Latin American countries in translation.

Religion and Capitalism Joseph Schumpeter described capitalism as animated by a perennial gale of creative destruction. While he was referring to its capacity to create and destroy industries, capitalism has had the same effect on social worlds. From those tumultuous worlds, a diverse array of religious practices, beliefs, and sentiments have likewise flourished and decayed. This course explores the relationship between global capitalism and religion in the modern period. Anchored in a comparison between Brazil and the United States, we will explore how religious traditions have encountered the world transformed by capitalism as well as the religious dimensions of capitalism itself. 3 hours lect./disc.

Methods in the Study of Religion How do we think about religion? Is there a common way to talk about religion across cultural divides or should we simply concur that religion is like art, where “We can’t define it, but we know it when we see it? This course will take us through the basic twentieth and twenty-first century theories in the study of religion as “ways of perceiving” this most elusive of phenomena: anthropology, psychology, history, text, politics, philosophy, theology, experience. All of these ways of perceiving religion play a crucial role in the history of the field. We will end by thinking through recent issues in the study of religion–religion and politics, gender and sexuality, comparative and interfaith studies, and the authority of religious identity. Students will be asked to outline a single, compelling case study in religion, and each week they will apply the theorists we read to the details of their case.  In applying theories about religion to real-life situations, students will become skillful practitioners of the art of interpreting religion. They will also develop their own approaches to the study of religion and be able to articulate that approach to a wider audience.

American Religion In this course we will explore religion in the Americas with a focus on the United States. Relying on a metaphor from linguistics, we will trace how an American religious “grammar” emerged from colonial contact zones and then assess how capitalism, denominationalism, and secularism shaped that grammar during the ensuing centuries. Extending the metaphor, we will seek to understand how different actors “spoke” American religion to shape society, make sense of the world, and harness natural and supernatural power. We will cover American variations on the traditions of Buddhism, indigenous religion, Christianity, African diasporic religion, folk spirituality, and Islam. 3 hrs lect, 1 hr. disc.

Possessions: Theories of Power in American Religion Upon reading Faust, Karl Marx concluded that Goethe’s wisdom was simple: “the extent of the power of money is the extent of my power.” Or, in other words: money represents the power to possess a thing and, in possessing it, to wield that thing’s power. Despite this connection made at the roots of Western theories of power, we do not typically regard our possession of private property as akin to the Devil’s possession of human bodies. In this seminar we will explore the rich and troubling overlaps between private property, demonic possessions, mediumship, and power in the Americas.

Death in Latin America The refrain of colonialism in the Americas was death. In its wake, encounters with dying and the dead shaped national cultures and popular religiosities across the hemisphere. In this course we will explore the diversity of rituals, stories, and devotions surrounding death in Latin America. Through a careful reading of Eduardo Galeano’s The Open Veins of Latin America, we will critically examine the geopolitical entity of Latin America in its historical context while learning how to write powerfully about its social and economic realities. We will cover death across secular and religious formations in Mexico, Haiti, Brazil, Guatemala, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

Justin Doran

Reviews and ratings for Justin Doran at Middlebury College.Justin Doran teaches Religion and Violence, Crossroads, American Prosperity Religion and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Justin Doran good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

Professor Doran is amazing! I am so sad he is leaving. This class featured a semester long project which consisted of making a board game. At the end of the semester we all played the game as our final. Highly recommend!

Doran is a great professor. He's also great with academic accommodations. The course focused more on Brazil than I thought it would, but none the less, it was a very very interesting course. Fall 2025. 

I thought the course content was really interesting; Dr. Doran was passionate in his lectures and about the class materials, and he'd start every class off talking about real-world connections to the content. Exams and projects are both chill. 