Barry Stephenson's homepage
I am an assistant professor in the Religious Studies Department at Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland. My research deals with the interactions of religion and culture in the modern west, especially the interplay between Christian thought and practice and the arts (literature, film, visual & material culture, ritual, performance, theatre). In the wake of 9/11, I have also been concerned to better understand the role of religion in generating, exacerbating or mitigating violent conflict, and in the articulation of Christian thought in currents of contemporary continental philosophy. My approach to the study of religion is eclectic and interdisciplinary, drawing on contributions from the fields of intellectual and cultural history, literary criticism, ritual and performance studies, and the anthropology of religion.
Areas of Research & Teaching
- Christian Thought & History
- Ritual Studies
- Religion and the Arts
- Religion, Modernity, and the Post-secular
- Anthropology of Religion
Academic Background
M.A. Wilfrid Laurier University
Ph.D. University of Calgary
I was awarded a SSHRC doctoral fellowship for study at the
University of Calgary, where I completed my Ph.D., in 2005. In the
spring of 2005, I received a SSHRC post-doctoral fellowship to study
Reformation-themed festivals and religious travel in Wittenberg,
Germany, and migrated back to Wilfrid Laurier University (where I
earned my M.A. degree). I spent several years at Laurier, teaching a
range of courses in the Religion and Culture Department, and also at
Renison College and the University of Toronto. Out of my doctoral
and post-doctoral research grew two books: Veneration
and Revolt: Hermann Hesse and Swabian Pietism (Wilfrid
Laurier University Press, 2009) and Performing
the Reformation: Public Ritual in the City of Luther
(Oxford, 2010). I have delivered papers and lectures at several
universities and conferences in North America and Europe, and have
published numerous articles and book chapters. In 2009-2011, I was a
contributing member of a research project titled Ritual,
Media and Conflict, hosted by the Faculty of Religious Studies
at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and the Ritual
Dynamics Collaborative Research Center at the University of
Heidelberg in Germany. I was previously the co-chair of the Ritual
Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion. I am presently
putting the finishing touches on Ritual:
A
Very Short Introduction, a new volume in the handy series
published by Oxford. For information on new research, click on Research.
Current courses can be found under Teaching.
