Curriculum Vitae

I am interested in religious pluralism, and argue our approach to differences and commonalities should begin with the senses, exploring such things as the use of bread and incense, chanting and drumming, visual images and synaesthetic mystical experiences across religious traditions. Sensual engagements with material, artistic objects are the common feature across religious traditions, and the human body stands at the heart of it all.

My teaching and research focus on how ways of sensing affect ways of being religious, and thus also, human. What people look at, smell, touch, taste, and hear are shaped by cultural, biological, and religious environments. Meanwhile, religious traditions, ancient and modern, institutional and barely recognizable, utilize sensory engagement to influence, enlighten, and sometimes manipulate.

Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief, was the 2006 runner up for Best New Journal by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals