Faculty
Manuel A. Vásquez
Associate Professor -
Neikirk Term Professor (2002-03)
UF Research Foundation Professor (2004-2006)
Religions of Latin America and among U.S. Latinos, Method and Theory, Religion and Globalization
Office: 107B Anderson Hall
Phone: (352) 392-1625
Email: mvasquez@religion.ufl.edu
Manuel A. Vásquez received his B.S. from Georgetown University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Temple University. His dissertation and first book, The Brazilian Popular Church and the Crisis of Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 1998), explored the effects of democratization and late capitalism on grassroots progressive Catholicism in Brazil. The book received the 1998 award for excellence in the analytical-descriptive study of religion from the American Academy of Religion.
His most recent publications include Globalizing the Sacred: Religion Across the Americas (Rutgers University Press, 2003), which he co-authored with Marie Friedmann Marquardt; Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life in America (AltaMira 2005), co-edited with Karen Leonard, Alex Stepick, and Jennifer Holdaway; Latin American Religions: Histories and Documents in Context (New York University Press 2008), co-edited with Anna Peterson; and A Place to Be: Brazilian, Guatemalan, and Mexican Immigrants in Florida’s New Destinations (Rutgers University Press, forthcoming), co-edited with Philip Williams and Timothy Steigenga.
Currently, Vásquez is co-directing with Philip Williams a study on religious pluralism, transnational migration, and inter-ethnic relations in the New South, which is supported by the Ford Foundation. See http://www.latam.ufl.edu/NewFordProjectSite/index.shtml
He is also a member of the planning committee for "The Religious Lives of Migrant Minorities," a project based at the Social Science Research Council which includes field research among Christians, Muslims, and Hindus in London, Johannesburg, and Kuala Lumpur. See: http://programs.ssrc.org/intmigration/migrant/
Vásquez is completing a book entitled: Religion Rematerialized: Embodiment, Practice, and Emplacement, under contract with Oxford University Press.
