Fields of Study —

Religion in the Americas

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.

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.