Religion, Health, and Wellness in Modern America

What is wellness? What does it mean to be well? Who determines our cultural standards for wellbeing? And what does wellness have to do with religion? Invocations of wellness abound in contemporary America, with new products, services, groups, and practices promising to address whatever ails your mind, body, and spirit. This course pays special attention to the last of these—spirit—to ask where, how, and why religion and spirituality appear in the modern wellness industry.

This interdisciplinary class draws upon history, religious studies, anthropology, and science and technology studies to ask questions like: What is medical expertise? Where does knowledge about health come from? Who is the expert of your personal health? How do you know when you are well? How do people come to articulate and feel their knowledge? Of what consequence is the body and bodily health in American religion? What kinds of religion concern themselves with bodily health? And, how does religion find its way into wellness products, services, and discussions?

Units:

Vibes

Manifesting

Toxins & Cleansing

Recovery

Readings include:

Susannah Crockford, Ripples of the Universe

Donovan O. Schaefer, Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism After Darwin

Kerri Kelly, American Detox: The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal

Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality, eds. Jonathan Metzl and Anna Kirkland

Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness

Dana Logan, “The Lean Closet: Asceticism in Postindustrial Consumer Culture”

Mary Douglas, Danger and Purity: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo

Kira Ganga Kieffer, “Smelling Things: Essential Oils and Essentialism in Contemporary American Spirituality”

Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light, and Other Essays