Deirdre de la Cruz

Current Research Interests:

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, God's Magicians: Philippine Centers of the Global Occult 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.

Public Scholarship:

The University of Michigan holds one of the most extensive and diverse collections of Philippine materials in North America, if not the world, owing to the university’s historical participation in the American colonial project. For the last several years, I have served as Co-Principal Investigator of ReConnect/ReCollect: Reparative Connections to Philippine Collections at the University of Michigan, a collaborative project of public scholarship that seeks to repair historical harm by creating models for more ethical and equitable Philippine colonial collections that introduce Filipino and Indigenous agency to their stewardship. Our team has advocated for greater access to U-M’s collections for Filipino and Indigenous communities, artists, and culture bearers through programming such as open houses and artists residencies. Since 2023, we have also traveled every summer to the Philippines to conduct community consultations and share digital and print copies of our archival and photographic collections with universities, archives, and museums both big and small.

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 studies and topics courses, I offer seminars on historical methodolgy, theory and method in the study of religion, and how to write across the disciplines.  I am an award-winning teacher, and with U-M undergraduates have been building The Philippines and the University of Michigan, an online exhibit of student-led original research and writing on the history of the relationship between the Philippines and the University of Michigan.