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 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.

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

The track stresses ethnographic and/or archival research on the myriad of expressions of religion in the region. Graduate students and recent graduates in Religion in the Americas work on diverse topics, including yoga in the U.S., Mormon missions in Latin America, transnational Charismatic Christian movements, the Jewish diaspora in Latin America, and religion and politics in Chile, among others.

Required courses (beyond Method & Theory I and II): REL 6126 Religion in the Americas; REL 6387 Religion in Latin America; REL 6137 Religion in North America.

Recommended Courses: Students are strongly encouraged to take these three additional courses: REL 6137 Indigenous Religions of the Americas; REL 5365 Islam in the Americas; A research methods course.

Elective courses: As often as possible, department faculty offer courses such as Buddhism in America, Hinduism in America, and Religion, globalization, and Immigration. Graduate students in the Americas are encouraged to take these courses whenever possible.

Language requirement: Students must demonstrate competence in at least one and in many cases two non-English languages in the Americas (i.e., Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, and/or any the other Amerindian 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 history, culture, and religion; 3) Religion in the Americas; 4) A fourth exam in another area, defined as a teaching field, such as Indigenous Religions, Islam, Hinduism, Religion and Nature, or Sociology, Anthropology, or Philosophy of Religion, among others. This exam is to be determined in consultation with the student’s advisory committee; 5) oral examination, to be taken upon successful completion of all written qualifying exams.

Department of Religion

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Department of Religion

107 Anderson Hall
P. O. Box 117410
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-7410
info@religion.ufl.edu
Phone: 352.392.1625
Fax: 352.392.7395