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 independent scholar Philip Tite of Seattle, Washington (USA) and Kelly J. Baker who teaches religious studies and American Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville . The associate editor is Matt Sheedy, a doctoral candidate at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg (Canada). This site is currently maintained by Nathan Rein of Ursinus College. Thanks for visiting.
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Associate Editors 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.
Donovan O. Schaefer is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Haverford College’s John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities. His graduate work was done through the Department of Religion at Syracuse University, and he has taught at SU and Le Moyne College in addition to Haverford. 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, Winnipeg, and Associate Editor of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion. His research interests include critical social theory (from the Frankfurt School to poststructuralism), method and theory, secularization and ritual theory, fundamentalism, ethics and social movements. Religion and culture, including issues of gender, race, and class, is also of great interest, especially representations via news media, film, TV, etc. His dissertation offers a critique of Juergen Habermas’s theory of religion in the public sphere and he is also conducting research on myths, rituals and symbols in the Occupy Movement, which includes fieldwork at Occupy Winnipeg.
Philip L. Tite is an Affiliate Lecturer in the Comparative Religion Program of the University of Washington, 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 books include The Apocryphal Epistle to the Laodiceans: An Epistolary and Rhetorical Analysis (TENTS, 7; Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2012) and 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.
