American Fanatics: Religion, Rebellion, and Empire in the Nineteenth Century
Order through New York University Press or through Ames’ local bookstore, Dog-Eared Books.
Book launch at Dog-Eared Books with Dr. Cara Burnidge moderating. Photo taken before a tornado warning forced us to continue the talk in the shop basement.
Teaching & Research Areas
Teaching and researching in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University, I am an interdisciplinary scholar of human world-building across the domains of religion, culture, politics, and games. Skeptical of narratives of secularization, disenchantment, and individualization, I examine the perseverance and effervescent bursts of sacrality in the modern world with attention to historical context and social effects. My articles and book projects provide critical histories of society’s fine distinctions between good and bad religion—the rhetoric of cults, fanaticism, and superstition. Though drawing on global comparative studies, my research focus is the United States from the nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century.
More recently I am one of four professors who founded the new game design major at Iowa State University.
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My primary field of study is religion in the United States. The historical narrative I am invested in is the tension between the radical innovation and diversification of religions and the cultural and political operationalization of religion. The study of secularism in the US provides an analytical framework for thinking about how secular institutions define what counts as religion proper in accordance with particular priorities and assumptions. I understand modern US to be defined not by secularization (the privatization or disappearance of religion), but by the strategic deployment of differences between science, religion, and superstition, among other key terms. Such differentiations are especially complicated to track in the environment of religious innovation and the spiritual marketplace. My work brings together analyses of law, popular culture media, religious authorities, and politicians to complicate notions of religious freedom and religion as reducible to individualized private belief.
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Though the common sense thinking of liberal secularism suggests that religions are, or at least should be, peaceful, recent scholarship argues that we should also attend to the varieties of religion categorized as cult-ish, fanatical, or radical. Such categories and communities require historicization and contextualization to properly understand. My work, especially in my book project American Fanatics, attends to how secular institutions and religious communities alike have sparred over divine authenticity, spirited feelings, and sacred violence.
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Digital and analog games are rising forms of media that excel at abstracting real-world systems, prompting player interactivity, and rewarding engaged attention. Games also make arguments about the world as it is or should be. From the earliest board games such as Senet or Mehen to modern games such as Civilization, Assassin’s Creed, or Okami, religion and culture play a role in the development, experience, and social interpretation of games. In terms of game studies my emerging research projects examine the rise of cult-builder games that systematize presumed sociological and psychological cult dynamics. In terms of game design, I am in the early stages of prototyping analog games with mechanics and objectives are informed by humanities research. In other words: games that make arguments. My aspiration is to create games that are educational, engaging, and have solid gameplay.
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