Department Chair; Professor of Southeast Asian Studies; Professor of History
About
Current research projects:
I am an historian and cultural anthropologist of the Philippines, with an interest in the transformation of religious sensibilities, beliefs, and phenomena in modernity. Specifically, my work examines different varieties of Filipino Christianity through their material, textual, and technological mediations. My approach to these subjects departs from the premise that the Philippines is a highly productive site for comparative and interdisciplinary inquiry, and thus my work situates the Philippines and Filipinos in relationship to other worlds and communities—be they defined by empire, Christian mission, or diaspora—in ways that unsettle claims often made about Filipino culture and history. At the same time, my work “thinks with” Filipino Christian phenomena as a means to develop innovative approaches to researching and writing about religion.
My first book, Mother Figured: Marian Apparitions and the Making of a Filipino Universal (University of Chicago Press, 2015), is a study of the efflorescence of apparitions and miracles of the Virgin Mary in the Philippines, from the mid-nineteenth century to the turn of the millennium. It documents not only the conditions of this efflorescence but its effects, particularly on the place of Filipinos in the greater Catholic world. My current book project, tentatively titled Spirits of a New Age, investigates alternative spiritual and religious movements in the Philippines as they intersect with and influence “occult” and “new age” discourses and practices worldwide. As with my first book, this second project pays particular attention to the formation of religious publics as they articulate with colonial and post-colonial modernity, nationalism, and politics.
Current projects:
In addition to these major book projects, I research and publish broadly on Filipino popular and religious cultures as they instantiate major concepts in the field of Southeast Asian studies and the study of religion. I also write on and am interested in the theoretical and methodological intersections of disciplines including anthropology and history. I am currently co-chair of a multi-year seminar on New Perspectives on Religion in the Philippines at the American Academy of Religion, which seeks to address several lacunae in the relevant historiography and ethnographic literature, and bring together international scholars—especially Philippine-based scholars—working on religious and secular diversity in the region.
Teaching interests:
My teaching broadly reflects these research interests, and I have developed and taught courses on everything from the history of Christian conversion in Asia, to gender and sexuality in Southeast Asia, to a graduate-level seminar on the Philippines. In addition to developing specific area and topics seminars, I am interested in offering courses that teach graduate students theory and method in the study of religion, and how to write across the disciplines.
