Friday, November 6, 2020
1 p.m. EDT
Online Webinar via Zoom
Most scholarly engagements with Orthodox Christianity rest in the fields of theology and history, with little ethnographic focus on the socio-political, everyday lives of Orthodox Christians today. Similarly, anthropology of Orthodoxy is often devoid of theological sensitivity. In an effort to make Orthodox Studies holistic and attuned to the experiences of believers, this panel brings together theologians and anthropologists of Orthodox Christianity to think through the social life of religious concepts and the future of the field. Orthodoxy is not a tradition of the past, but rather is forged by the challenges of the modern world and the debates of contemporary life.
This panel will be co-moderated by Dr. Candace Lukasik, 2020-2022 Postdoctoral Fellow, John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University in St. Louis and 2020-2021 Religion, Spirituality, and Democratic Renewal Fellow, Social Science Research Council; and Dr. Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, 2020-2021 Recovering Truth Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, Arizona State University.
Angie Heo is Assistant Professor of the Anthropology and Sociology of Religion at the University of Chicago. After receiving her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley, she taught at Barnard College and held research fellow positions at Emory University and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Based on fieldwork in Egypt, The Political Lives of Saints (University of California Press 2018) is her first book.
Elina Vuola, doctor of theology, is professor of Global Christianity and Dialogue of Religions at the Faculty of Theology, U of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests cover interdisciplinary study of gender and religion, gender theories and religion, liberation and feminist theology, the figure of the Virgin Mary, and combining theology and ethnography in the study of lived religion. Her latest book is The Virgin Mary across Cultures. Devotion amongst Costa Rican Catholic and Finnish Orthodox Women. Routledge: London, 2019.
Sonja Thomas is an Associate Professor of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at Colby College. Her research examines the intersections of caste, race, gender, class, and religion in postcolonial India and race, labor, and the South Asian diaspora in the US. She is the author of Privileged Minorities: Syrian Christianity, Gender, and Minority Rights in Postcolonial India. She has also written articles on tap dance and Black vernacular traditions in the US and globally. She is currently researching Catholic missionary priests from India serving in rural Montana.
Alexandra Antohin is an anthropologist with over ten years of ethnographic experience studying Orthodox Christian societies and has conducted fieldwork in the Russian Far East, north-central Ethiopia and the Washington D.C. area. Alexandra completed her doctorate in Social Anthropology at University College London and has taught at George Washington University and Westchester Community College. She serves as the Vermont Folklife Center’s Director of Education and previously worked as the Research and Program Director (2017-2020) for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Avoice Virtual Library Project, a digital archive dedicated to capturing Black legislative behavior in the United States Congress.
Dr. Bethlehem Dejene is an Ethiopian-born anthropologist researching in the areas of spiritual healing and etiologies of affliction within the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Her research interests directly intersect with her life as a member and practitioner within the Orthodox Church and its hesychastic tradition.
Orthodox Christian Studies Center events are free and open to the public.