From colonial practices designed to civilize indigenous communities, to counter-terrorism initiatives aimed at de-radicalizing dissidents in the wake of the War on Terror, to controversies over blasphemy and religious harm cases in international law, religious passions have been cast as a specter of unreason, treason, and radicalization. These assumptions sustain...
This dissertation addresses inter alia the problem of certain intertextual discontinuities across Thomas Hobbes’s oeuvre regarding the issue of ecclesiology. I find that these disparities did not result from a change in Hobbes’s private opinions, but from the regicide of 1649 as an event that liberated Hobbes to unveil his...
Experts have recognized the potential for religion to shape environmental attitudes. In recent decades, the world has seen the rise of faith-based organizations in tackling issues of sustainability, particularly those following Islamic ecotheology. Embedded in Islamic scripture is an emphasis on responsibility and accountability towards the Earth; Islamic environmental organizations...
This dissertation takes up Islam’s relationship to Black nationalism across the Atlantic diaspora of Muslims that I call “the Fugitive Islamicate.” Scholars most often have described this relationship as commencing in the twentieth century with the rise of “Black Muslim religion,” a U.S. religious movement that begins with Noble Drew...
This dissertation examines how the experience of migration and the context of reception influences religious ideas and practices. Using the experience of two branches of a Colombian Evangelical church, one in Miami, Florida and one in Madrid, Spain, I explore the extent to which context of reception and the experiences...
This essay examines the relationship between religion and the state as articulated in the thought of the founding father of the Republic of Senegal: Leopold Sedar Senghor (Senegal's first President) and Mamadou Dia (Senegal's first Prime Minister). Although Senghor was Catholic and Dia a Muslim, they shared a vision of...
Initiation is a performative model that dictates the participation of individuals in the various traditions of Western occultism, locating that individual within a nexus of practices and discourses that facilitate the transmission of occult teachings to that individual. While the act of initiation may be represented by a single performed...
In the Marvel Comics series Moon Knight, a mercenary believes an ancient Egyptian deity has brought him back from the dead so he can become the eponymous superhero. However, the mercenary’s symptoms of schizophrenia suggest he is instead simply suffering from a psychological break. From 1975-1999, Moon Knight stories used...
This dissertation is an ethnography that uses semi-structured interviews, field notes, and participant observation to explore how two religious congregations respond to survivors of domestic violence. I interviewed twenty-two parishioners including domestic violence survivors, clergy and bystanders. I transcribed these interviews verbatim using Agar's method of transcript handling. I used...
Circling the Cosmograms marks the first full-length study of second-generation feminist and/or queer art and performance in the Haitian Dyaspora (Haitian Kreyòl spelling) following the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Through archival research, visual and performance art analysis, and in-depth interviews, I document the ways feminist and/or queer Haitian-American...