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Fields of Study —
Religion in the Americas
The Field
This Ph.D. specialization builds upon the
strengths of departmental faculty and the University of Florida’s
Center for Latin American Studies, one of the largest and best-regarded
programs in the country. During the past twenty years, the study of religion in
North America has begun to move beyond a primary focus on once dominant forms
of European Christianity that have migrated to the United States to a growing
interest in the broad diversity of religious cultures in the Americas. At the
same time, scholarship on religion in Latin America
has increased in quantity, diversity, and quality. Our graduate program is unique in addressing
religions throughout North and Latin America,
with a focus on interactions and encounters.
Areas of specialization include immigrant/diaspora communities,
indigenous traditions, religion and politics, and new religious movements.
Faculty
David Hackett, the department’s chairperson, is a well-known historian of religion in the United States, whose publications include the
widely-used textbook, Religion and American Culture and the award-winning The Rude Hand of Innovation: Religion and
Social Order in Albany, New York, 1652-1836. He is currently exploring the relationship
between men’s religious lives in Freemasonry and their participation in
organized religious life, in a book tentatively titled Freemasonry and American Religious History.
Anna Peterson has written extensively on
religion and society in Central America,
including Martyrdom and the Politics of
Religion: Progressive Catholicism in El Salvador’s Civil War, and Seeds of the Kingdom: Utopian Communities in
the Americas. Her research focuses
on religiously-based social movements in both Latin and North
America, with a particular interest in the ways that religious
communities interpret and enact environmental values. Together with Manuel Vásquez and U.F.
Political Scientist Philip Williams, she co-edited Christianity, Social Change, and Globalization in the Americas. Peterson and Vásquez have also recently
co-authored Latin American Religions:
Histories and Documents in Context.
Manuel Vásquez works both on Brazil and on
U.S. Latinos and transnational migration. His books include The Brazilian Popular Church and the Crisis
of Modernity and Globalizing the
Sacred: Religion across the Americas (with Marie F. Marquardt). His current research focuses on religion in
the lives of new Latino immigrants in Florida
and the South. Along with Philip
Williams, he co-directs a major research project, funded by the Ford Foundation
on this topic (see http://www.latam.ufl.edu/fordproject/).
Robin Wright, a scholar of indigenous
religions with long experience in Brazil, focuses especially on
Amazonian peoples. He is the author of Cosmos,
Self and History in Baniwa Religion and co-editor (with Neil Whitehead) of In Darkness and Secrecy: the Anthropology of
Sorcery and Witchcraft in Amazonia. He is presently completing an edited
volume on the history of missions and conversion among indigenous people in Latin America.
Several other religion
faculty offer courses that enrich the Americas and/or publish research pertinent to it, and serve on the committees of Americas track
students.
Leah Hochman works on Judaism in the Americas, including religion and politics and
new religious movements in North and Latin America.
Vasudha Narayanan conducts research and
teaches on the Hindu diaspora in North America
and directs the Center for Hindu Traditions in the Americas (CHITRA).
Mario Poceski, a scholar of Chinese
Buddhism, also teaches on Buddhism in America.
Zoharah Simmons teaches courses on
African-American religions, Islam in the Americas, and women in
religion.
Bron Taylor has written widely on nature
religions and the religious dimensions of environmental movements in America, including in Ecological Resistance
Movements, and is developing a textbook exploring Religion and Nature in North America.
Faculty and graduate students
also work closely with colleagues in Political Science, Anthropology, History,
and other programs, to develop research and teaching programs in this
interdisciplinary and collaborative field.
Graduate Students
Graduate students in Religion in the Americas are working on diverse topics,
including Mormon missions in Latin America, yoga, U.S.-Mexico border
communities, and the Jewish diaspora in Latin America,
among others.
Required courses: Religion in the Americas,
Religion in Latin America, and Religion in North America.
Language requirement:
Tested competence in at least one and in many cases two non-English
languages selected in consultation with the faculty supervisory
committee on the basis of their relevance to the student's research
program.
Qualifying examinations: 1)
North American history, culture and religion; 2) Latin American
culture, history and religion; 3) Religion in the Americas, 4) a fourth
exam in the student’s area of specialization; 5) oral examination.
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