In a secular age, public religion is — to recall Mary Douglas' definition of dirt — matter out of place. Since the early modern consolidation of the category, "religion" has been understood as fundamentally private, cordoned off from politics, economics, and other social domains both conceptually and (in some cases) legally. But despite the emergence of regulatory structures meant to circumscribe or privatize it, religion has remained a vital component of public life worldwide, thus posing significant problems for secularist modes of thought. To make sense of this predicament, recent work in the emergent field sometimes described as critical secular studies has undertaken a critical reappraisal of secularism and related categories. This seminar introduces students to this ongoing scholarly conversation by asking how a critical genealogy of "the public" can contribute to it. What is a public? What is the genealogy of this term as a category of modern thought, and what is its relationship to political liberalism (or "government by discussion")? Assigned readings will survey critical approaches to these questions emerging from media studies, postcolonial studies, critical legal studies, queer theory, and affect theory, as well as various fields within religious studies.