I Want to Break Free: Abolition and Full Participation in the Religious Studies Classroom

Abstract

“I Want to Break Free: Abolition and Full Participation in the Religious Studies Classroom” explores how the framework of abolition provides a model for organizing the religious studies classroom, challenging hegemonic disciplinary practices, and rethinking the contemporary implications of the carceral state. This chapter engages my course, “Religion Behind Bars,” as a space where religious communities and university classrooms are studied as sites and cyphers for abolition. Students and I use Vincent Lloyd and Joshua Dubler’s Break Every Yoke and Fred Moten’s The Undercommons as texts to think through the processes of abolition, full participation, and breaking free. Ultimately, I illustrate that this technique enables students to more thoughtfully engage the relationship between the carceral state, studying religion, and the idea of full participation. “Breaking Free,” therefore, becomes a way to do close readings of religions and the carceral state, as well as prepare students for a new relationship to engaged citizenship.