Welcome to the blog site for the Bulletin for the Study of Religion, published by Equinox. If you would like to subscribe to our feed, please use this link. The co-editors of the Bulletin are Craig Martin of St. Thomas Aquinas College and independent scholar Philip Tite of Seattle, Washington (USA). The associate editor is Kenny Smith, a doctoral student in Emory University’s Graduate Division of Religion. This site is currently maintained by Nathan Rein of Ursinus College. Thanks for visiting.
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Contributor Bios
The Bulletin publishes articles that address religion in general, the history of the field of religious studies, method and theory in the study of religion, and pedagogical practices. Articles featured in the Bulletin cover diverse religious traditions from any time period (from ancient religions to new religious movements), but are typically distinguished by their social scientific methods (e.g., historical, sociological, anthropological, cognitive scientific) or critical theory apparatus (i.e., post-colonialist, post-structuralist, neo-marxist). The Bulletin is unique in that it offers a forum for various academic voices to debate and reflect on the ever-changing state of the field, and insofar as it encourages scholars continually to engage meta-level questions at the leading edge of inquiry.
Kelly J. Baker teaches religious studies and American Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received her Ph.D. (2008) from Florida State University in Religion, particularly American religious history. She is the author of Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America (Kansas 2011), which employs the 1920s Ku Klux Klan as a case study to explore the intersection of Protestantism, nationalism, whiteness and gender. Her recent work includes articles on the Klan’s robes and fiery crosses as material religion, “Rapture readiness” in contemporary Christian apocalypticism and zombie apocalypses in contemporary film and literature. She serves as the chair of the Religions in America section for the Southeastern Center for the Study of Religion (SECSOR) as well as the Religion and American Culture Caucus for the American Studies Association. In addition to these commitments, Kelly is also an editor of the Religion in American History blog. She also has continuing interests in the methods and theories of religious studies, ethnography, pedagogy and social media.
Ben Brazil is a Ph.D. candidate in Emory University’s Graduate Division of Religion. His dissertation examines how the youth travel practices of the 1960s and 1970s became means to re/form moral selves and practice being “spiritual but not religious.” Before beginning graduate school, Brazil worked as a reporter and freelance journalist. He has also worked for immigrant rights and continues to provide support for Catholic volunteer programs in the Atlanta area.
Ipsita Chatterjea is completing a Ph.D on African Methodist Episcopal women at Vanderbilt University’s Graduate Department of Religion in the History and Critical Theories of Religion area. Ipsita’s research interests focus on the relationships between religion, violence and social regulation, African-American religious history as intellectual history, sociology of religion and critical theories and methods and the study of religion. She is co-founder and co-chair of the AAR’s Study of Religion as an Analytical Discipline Workshop (SORAAAD) and Sociology of Religion Group. She is a member of the Critical Theories and Discourses on Religion Group steering committee, serving since 2005. http://vanderbilt.academia.edu/IpsitaChatterjea
Katherine Daley-Bailey received her A.B. (2001) and M.A. (2004) degrees in Religion from the University of Georgia. She served as the president of the local chapter of Theta Alpha Kappa, the National Honors Society for Religious Studies/Theology while finishing her Master’s degree. Having taught Religious Studies courses at the University of Georgia, she is currently teaching part-time at Georgia State University and Georgia Perimeter College. Daley-Bailey’s primary research interests are Religion, Literature, and the Arts, Theory and Methods, and Religion in Popular Culture. A regular contributor to the online magazine, Religion Nerd, she is currently working on her own column for the magazine, ‘The Sacred and the Strange,’ which highlights the sometimes paradoxical nature of religious matters. In 2007, Kate co-authored a chapter titled Ernest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying: Freedom in Confined Spaces with Dr. Carolyn Jones Medine, a professor at the University of Georgia.
Suzanne Degnats in currently working on her MA in Religious Studies at Georgia State University. Her interests include the study of personal religious narratives and biographies of ordinary people from a multidisciplinary approach, using narrative theory, cognitive science, anthropology, and the psychology of religion. Suzanne has published in the online journal Religion Nerd and recently presented a paper, “Hindu Identity in Southeast American Culture: Faith Tapestries of Hindu Immigrants As Seen Through Religious Narratives” at the SECSOR Convention. Her thesis will explore alternative classifications of religiosity based on narratives from the Religious Life Stories Project.
Deane Galbraith is a part-time lecturer at the University of Otago, in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and Hebrew language. His areas of research include the composition of the book of Numbers, giant traditions in ancient Hebrew literature, Orientalism in historical biblical studies, and religion in the music and performances of U2. He is a founding editor of Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception (http://relegere.org/index.php/relegere). Recent publications include “Fallen Angels in the Hands of U2″ in Scott Calhoun, ed., Exploring U2: Is This Rock ‘n’ Roll? Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2 (Scarecrow Press, 2011) and “Drawing Our Fish in the Sand: Secret Biblical Allusions in the Music of U2″ Biblical Interpretation, 19 n. 2 (2011): 181-222.
Cathy Gutierrez attended Vassar College (A.B. 1989) followed by graduate school at Syracuse University in the Religion Department (M.A. 1993; Ph.D. 2000). She has worked at Sweet Briar College since 1998 where she is currently a Professor of Religion in the Classics, Philosophy, and Religion Department. Her primary research interests are nineteenth-century American religions and the history of esotericism, particularly where they intersect with ideas of consciousness. She has published on the Free Love movement in America, Theosophy, millennialism, and the Freemasons. Her recent monograph, Plato’s Ghost: Spiritualism in the American Renaissance (Oxford University Press 2009), examines the American legacy of Neoplatonism in popular religious expression. She is currently working on a book about various nineteenth-century religions and their ideas of how religious and cultural Others were often understood in surprisingly positive and constructive ways.
Andrea R. Jain is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. She received her doctoral degree from the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University in 2010. Her research interests include theories of religion and religion in relation to the body. More specifically, her research focuses on the transnational construction and global popularization of modern yoga. Andrea’s current projects include studies on the intersections of consumer culture and modern yoga as well as modern yoga gurus. She has a forthcoming book entitled,Immanent Yogis: Modern Yoga and Consumer Culture. Other forthcoming publications includeComparing Religions: A Textbook Initiation,with Jeffrey J. Kripal and Ata Anzali, Wiley-Blackwell, and “The Dual-Ideal of the Ascetic and Healthy Body: The Jain Terapanth and Modern Yoga in the Context of Late Capitalism,”Nova Religio. Recent publications include “Erotic Motherhood and the Ideal Son: Mythology as Psychotherapy in the Krishna-Bhakti Tradition,”Pastoral Psychology.
James Dennis LoRusso is a doctoral candidate in American Religious Cultures at Emory University. His dissertation project examines the relationship between spirituality in business and larger cultural and socio-economic developments in the contemporary United States.
Kenneth MacKendrick has taught in the Department of Religion, University of Manitoba since 2002. His doctoral thesis on the early writings of Jürgen Habermas was completed at the Centre for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto and is published as Discourse, Desire, and Fantasy in Jürgen Habermas’ Critical Theory (2008). MacKendrick’s teaching interests include cognitive theory of religion, contemporary Christianity (fundamentalism and charismatic movements, secularization), evil in world religions, method and theory in the study of religion, and rituals of death and mourning. His current research focuses on the relation between cognition, imagination, and religion. He is a member of the editorial review board for the series, Studies in Critical Research on Religion, in association with Brill Academic Publishers and Haymarket Books and editor of the “Theory and Method” section of the journal Religion Compass (Wiley). Recent publications include “Evil in the Age of World Religions” (forthcoming), “We have an Imaginary Friend in Jesus” (2012), “The Challenge of Postmetaphysical Thinking and the Nature of Religious Thought” (2010), and “Chuck Palahniuk and the New Journalism Revolution” (2009).
Craig Martin is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at St. Thomas Aquinas College, Editor of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion, and Executive Secretary of the North American Association for the Study of Religion. His books include Masking Hegemony: A Genealogy of Liberalism, Religion and the Private Sphere (Equinox 2010), A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion (Equinox forthcoming), and Religious Experience: A Reader, co-edited with Russell T. McCutcheon (Equinox forthcoming). Craig’s research interests concern social theories of religion and ideology, particularly how “religion” is imagined in modern thought and popular discourses.
Tim Murphy is a graduate of the History of Consciousness Program at UCSC and author of several books, including Representing Religion: Essays in History, Theory and Crisis(Equinox, 2007) and The Politics of Spirit: Phenomenology, Genealogy, Religion (SUNY, 2010). He is currently working on a book which develops Saussurean semitotics into a full-blown theory of religion. He teaches philosophy of religion and theory in Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, where he is an Associate Professor.
Suzanne Owen received her PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Edinburgh in 2007 and began lecturing at Leeds Trinity University College the following year. Her research is primarily in indigenous traditions of the Americas, with a particular interest in Mi’kmaq traditions and issues of indigeneity in Newfoundland, and contemporary paganism. Her first monograph, The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality, was published by Continuum in 2008, and she is currently working on a second one for them on contemporary Druidry.
Steven Ramey is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, where he also directs the Asian Studies program. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where his work focused on contemporary religions and identity in India. His book Hindu Sufi or Sikh (Palgrave 2008) analyzes issues of identity within Sindhi Hindu communities. After many Sindhi Hindus migrated from Pakistan after Partition, they struggled between general Sindhi understandings of Hinduism (which include venerating the Guru Granth Sahib, Nanak, and Sufi pirs) and common definitions of Hinduism in India that excluded those elements. He is currently working on new projects, including a book on alternatives to the limiting language of religious labels for academic discourse and a collaborative project examining the historicity of identity, always fluid over place and time, while refraining from positing an ahistorical origin against which cultural change can be measured.
Nathan Rein is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy
and Religious Studies at Ursinus College in southeastern Pennsylvania.
He received a PhD from Harvard University in 2002. He is the author of
The Chancery of God: Protestant Print, Polemic and Propaganda against
the Empire, Magdeburg 1546-1551 (Ashgate, 2008), and he has published
in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion and in the Journal of
the American Academy of Religion. Since 2005, he has served as
co-chair of the History of Christianity Section of the American
Academy of Religion.
Donovan O. Schaefer is an adjunct instructor in the Department of Religious Studies at Le Moyne College, having recently completed his PhD at Syracuse University in the Department of Religion. In his research and teaching, he looks at the intersection of religion and embodiment using feminist, poststructuralist, and evolutionary biological approaches. Specifically, his interest is in the relationship between religion, bodies, and emotion, and in his dissertation,Animal Religion: Evolution, Affect, and Radical Embodiment, he argued for understanding religion in terms of a set of affective bodily practices that are shared by human and non-human animals. He is currently preparing his dissertation for publication and preparing a new project on atheism.
Matt Sheedy is a PhD. candidate at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg, Canada. His research interests include critical social theory (and all that it entails), political philosophy, method and theory, secularization and ritual theory, fundamentalism, and the question of how we can talk about ethics and evil in a disenchanted world.
Summar Shoaib received her BS in International Affairs from Georgia Tech in 2007 and her MA in Near Eastern Studies from NYU in 2009. She is currently a doctoral student in Emory University’s Graduate Division of Religion in the West and South Asian Religions concentration. Her research interests include Islam and gender, ritual performance, South Asian devotional literature and hagiography.
Deeksha Sivakumar is a Ph.D. student in South Asian Religions at Emory University, GA. She has completed her Master’s in Asian Religions from University of Hawaii (2010) under the tutelage of Lee Siegel and Kristin Bloomer and her B.A (Hons) in Philosophy and Psychology from Linfield College, OR (2007). She is natively proficient in Hindi, Tamil, and pursues Sanskrit as well for her doctoral studies on Indian religious traditions. Her current research interests surround a particular enactment of a goddess festival and its unique celebration in Southern India as Bommai Golu (https://sites.google.com/site/devikolu/). Her subordinate interests include ritual performance, healing, materiality, and femininity. She is also excited to see what digital technologies can do for the Humanities and the study of ethnography. She has been an energetic TA and presented several lectures on Hindu deities, ritual practices and the Indian diaspora.
Kenny Paul Smith is a doctoral student in Emory University’s Graduate Division of Religion, Associate Editor of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion, and Contributing Editor at Religion Nerd. His current research interests lie in the latter 20th and 21st century American religious landscapes, the ways in which scholars have imagined and deployed the interpretive categories “religion” and “magic,” and developing a Cultural Studies approach to the analysis of new and emergent religious movements. He previously (1999-2002, 2003-2006) served as a full-time adjunct (Visiting Instructor) for the Religious Studies and Philosophy departments at Georgia State University. He has published in Nova Religio: The Journal of New and Emergent Religions, and writes regularly for the Bulletin and for Religion Nerd.
Justin Stein is a doctoral student at the University of Toronto in the Department for the Study of Religion with a collaborative program at the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies. Justin’s dissertation research is on the twentieth century development and circulation of the spiritual healing practices called Reiki in social networks spanning Japan, Hawaii, and North America. His other research interests include the relationships between science, religion, and medicine; discourses of secularity; healing, spirit possession, the occult, and spirituality; transnational religion; new religious movements. He received an M.A. in Religion (Asian) at the University of Hawai‘i—Mānoa, where his thesis was on authority and authenticity in the historiography of Reiki founder narratives.
Philip L. Tite is an independent scholar living in Seattle, WA and co-editor of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion. He holds a PhD degree from McGill University (2005) and has authored several books and articles. His most recent book is Valentinian Ethics and Paraenetic Discourse: Determining the Social Function of Moral Exhortation in Valentinian Christianity (NHMS, 67; Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2009). He was a visiting assistant professor at Willamette University, taught at McGill University while a doctoral candidate, and has held visiting research appointments at both Willamette University and the University of Washington. As a specialist in the study of early Christianity, in particular Valentinian Gnosticism, Tite has strong interests in elucidating social processes at work in the study of religious phenomena. He also has strong interests in method and theory, religion and violence, and pedagogical issues in the academic study of religion. His work can be followed at http://independent.academia.edu/PhilipTite.
