Religion and U.S. Empire: Critical new histories

The Religion and U.S. Empire project challenges a double lacuna: a relative inattention to empire among historians of American religion, and to religion among scholars working on historical and contemporary manifestations of U.S. imperialism. We realize that religion must be recognized as a key factor in the formation, rationalization, and maintenance of U.S. empire; and in the many forms of resistance that have emerged, in the US and around the world, to challenge its power. At the same time, it is evident that the cultural and institutional structures of that empire have fundamentally shaped the practices and social formations of religion; and even beyond that the very category of religion in the modern world. Beginning with a collaborative initiative launched in 2013, the project continued from 2015 to 2018 as a working group within the American Academy of Religion.

This project culminated in an book— Religion and U.S. Empire: Critical New Histories— co-edited by Tisa Wenger (Yale) and Sylvester Johnson (Virginia Tech), published by NYU Press in 2022 in the North American Religions series; series editors Tracy Fessenden, Laura Levitt, and David Harrington Watt. This is a volume of thirteen essays that collectively theorize the multiple intersections of religion and empire from the eighteenth century up to the present.

studies in u.s. RELIGION, POLITICS, AND LAW

A book series with the University of Kansas Press

Religion, law, and politics are as tightly and dynamically entwined as ever in contemporary American life. This observation would surprise many scholars and critics of past generations who expected religion—and its powerful socio-political influence—to fade gradually away in the post-industrial world. Because this is not the case, exciting new scholarship is emerging on the intersections among religion, law, and politics from a variety of academic fields, including political science, history, sociology, law, and religious studies. While legal scholars explore the larger cultural and religious worlds in which the law takes shape, historians of religion ask how law and politics shape the institutions and practices we categorize as “religious” and how American law, religion, and politics are co-constituted in the process.

These trends create new opportunities for interdisciplinary conversation and collaboration. Interdisciplinary scholarship in this area is challenging, however, as it is difficult at best to meet the requirements of several disciplines at the same time. Too often, such work ends up being academically siloed, denying it the opportunity to speak across disciplinary lines. Under the leadership of series editors Leslie Griffin (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), Laura Olson (Clemson University), and Tisa Wenger (Yale University), this new book series will advance a profoundly interdisciplinary conversation on the historical and contemporary relationships between religion, law, and politics in the United States.

For more information see https://kansaspress.ku.edu/series/studies-in-us-religion-politics-and-law.html

Histories of Colonialism and Modernity

Histories of Colonialism and Modernity was an interdisciplinary reading group for faculty and doctoral students at Yale, directed by Tisa Wenger with Anne Eller (History), Sally Promey (American Studies), Ayesha Ramachandran (Comparative Literature), and Graduate Coordinator Jeong Yeon Lee (English). Our goal is to think comparatively about the historical connections between diverse forms of colonialisms and modernity/modernities, with particular attention to the complex and troubled role of “religion” in various configurations of the modern. Rather than assuming a single trajectory or set of connections between colonialism, modernity, and religion, we aim to learn from and to interrogate a variety of disciplinary assumptions around these themes. The project thus depends upon a diverse set of participants and perspectives from across the humanities and social sciences. The HCM reading group met monthly in the 2019-2020 academic year.