About the Cluster
We include intellectual, cultural and social historians who share interests in religion as it intersects with cultural and social history and, in particular, as a force in historical processes of stability, change, conflict and exchange. We are also engaged as public intellectuals with a variety of current debates concerning religion and society – from the place of religiosity in indigenous land claims and use to the dynamic relations between religion and scientific inquiry and practice. With research and teaching interests that encompass a broad range of regions and historical periods, we aim to develop a conversation that will invite comparative insights and questions about religion as a category of historical inquiry, as a force in social and political life, and about religiosity/spirituality in the context of identity formation and expression. Some of the cross-cutting issues that characterize members’ research are:
- Religion and violence – how/why religion precipitates violence in specific historical contexts and the consequences of those processes
- Contacts between different religiously identified communities, the ways that those differences are translated and/or transposed, and the historical effects of such interchanges
- Religiosity and religious affiliation as dimensions of identity that intersect with other forms of identification (gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality among others); ritual practice and the making of subjectivity and community.
- Liminal experiences and contexts – involving improvisation, mixing, reinvention – that religiosity and/or spirituality may engender at different historical moments
- The epistemological and evidentiary challenges posed by efforts to study the lived experiences of religiosity/spirituality in different historical contexts; the related instability of “religion” as a category of historical inquiry.
- The ruptures and continuities between ways of being/knowing associated with religion/spirituality and those associated with science.
- Religiosity and ritual as factors in the production, valuation and transformation of space, urban and rural.
People in the Cluster
Faculty:
- Hilary Bernstein
- James F. Brooks
- Juan Cobo
- Beth Digeser
- Ed English
- Sharon Farmer
- Mary Hancock (facilitator)
- Terence Keel
- Carol Lansing
- Sears McGee
- Ann Plane
- Erika Rappaport
- Adam Sabra
- Sherene Seikaly
- Paul Spickard
- Xiaowei Zheng
Departmental Affiliates:
- Janet Afary (Religious Studies & Feminist Studies)
- Cathy Albanese (Professor Emerita, Religious Studies)
- Joseph Blankholm (Religious Studies)
- Rudy Busto (Religious Studies)
- Stuart Smith (Anthropology)
- Ann Taves (Religious Studies)
- Christine Thomas (Religious Studies)
- David Walker (Religious Studies)