Abbreviated CV

(See full c.v. here.)

Education

2026   Ph.D., Leibniz University Hannover, Institute for the Study of Religion

• Dissertation: “Translating Difference: Individualism, Ideology, and the Making of Liberal Muslim Citizens”

2022   M.A., Emory University, Graduate Division of Religion

• Thesis: “Immigration, Nationalism, and Identity in American Religion”

2017   M.A., University of Colorado Boulder, Religious Studies

• Thesis: “Regimes of Belief: On the Pervasiveness of Religion as Belief from Locke to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom”

2012   B.A., University of Alabama, Religious Studies and History; Italian minor

Publications

Edited Volumes (Multi-Author Collections)

• Fabricating Authenticity, co-edited with Jason W. M. Ellsworth, Vol. 4 in the “Working With Culture on the Edge” series. Equinox Publishing Ltd., UK. 2024.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

• “America and Its Catholicisms: Complicating the Rise of an American Religion,” Bulletin for the Study of Religion (forthcoming 2025)

Book Chapters, Introductions, & Afterwords

• “Afterword: A Little Heritage Goes a Long Way” (co-authored with Jason W. M. Ellsworth), in Jason W. M. Ellsworth and Andie Alexander (eds.) Fabricating Authenticity, 164-77. Equinox Publishing Ltd., UK. 2024.

• “A Good Fake or a Bad Fake?” in Jason W. M. Ellsworth and Andie Alexander (eds.) Fabricating Authenticity, 112-16. Equinox Publishing Ltd., UK. (forthcoming 2024)

• “Introduction” (co-authored with Jason W. M. Ellsworth), in Jason W. M. Ellsworth and Andie Alexander (eds.) Fabricating Authenticity, 1-15. Equinox Publishing Ltd., UK. 2024.

• “Principles of Pedagogy: Thinking with Smith to Re-vision Our Systems of Training,” in Barbara Krawcowicz (ed.) Thinking with J. Z. Smith: Mapping Methods in the Study of Religion. 181-93. Equinox Publishing Ltd., UK. 2023.

• “Mapping the Future of Smith’s Legacy: A Conversation,” (transcript of interview with Aaron W. Hughes) in Barbara Krawcowicz (ed.) Thinking with J. Z. Smith: Mapping Methods in the Study of Religion. 219-28. Equinox Publishing Ltd., UK. 2023.

• “I’m Spiritual But Not Religious,” co-authored with Russell T. McCutcheon, in Craig Martin and Brad Stoddard (eds.) Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés. 97-112. Bloomsbury Academic. 2017.

• “Clashing Allegiances: The Practicality of Constructing National Identity” in Steven Ramey (ed.) Fabricating Difference. 69-76. Equinox Publishing Ltd., UK. 2017.

Book Reviews

• Christopher I. Lehrich, Jonathan Z. Smith on Religion (Routledge, 2021) Religious Studies Review (forthcoming).

• Sam D. Gill, The Proper Study of Religion: Building on Jonathan Z. Smith (Oxford University Press, 2020) Religious Studies Review (forthcoming).

• Matt Sheedy, Owning the Secular: Religious Symbols, Culture Wars, Western Fragility (Routledge, 2021) Religious Studies Review (forthcoming)

• Donald Wiebe, The Learned Practice of Religion in the Modern University (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), BASR Bulletin (forthcoming)

• Daniel Dubuisson, The Invention of Religions (Equinox, 2019), Religious Studies Review. (forthcoming)

Conferences

• “Individualism and the “Moral Imperative” of Climate Change Discourses,” Panel: “Religion: Solution or Problem?”, European Association for the Study of Religions, Gothenburg, Sweden, Aug. 2024 (paper accepted, but unable to attend)

• Chair & Panelist, Podcasting is Pedagogy Roundtable, Teaching Religion Unit, American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, Texas, Virtual Meeting, November 2021

• Respondent, Author-Meets-Critics Panel: Christopher R. Cotter’s The Critical Study of Non-Religion: Discourse, Identification, and Locality (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network Conference, University of Ottawa, Virtual Conference, June 2021 (invited respondent)

  • View the panel here.

• Chair, Class, Identity, and Religion Panel, AAR Invited Session I: Religion & Society, Southeastern American Academy of Religion, Florida State University, Virtual Conference, March 2021

• Chair, Class, Identity, and Religion Roundtable, North American Association for the Study of Religion, American Academy of Religion, Virtual Conference, November 2020

• “The Myth of Difference: Individuation, Hybridization, and Americanization,” Religions in America Unit, Southeastern American Academy of Religion, Athens, GA, February 2020

• Chair, NAASR Working Papers Review Panel, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion Unit, Southeastern American Academy of Religion, Athens, Georgia, February 2020

• Administrator, Academic Publishing for Graduate Students Workshop, North American Association for the Study of Religion, American Academy of Religion, San Diego, California, Nov. 2019

• “Principles of Pedagogy: Thinking with Smith in the Introductory Classroom,” Thinking with Jonathan Z. Smith Conference, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, June 2019

• “America and Its Catholicisms: Complicating the Rise of an American Religion,” Religions in America Unit, Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion, American Academy of Religion, Greenville, North Carolina, March 2019

• Chair, Class and Economy Panel, North American Association for the Study of Religion, Denver, Colorado, November 2018

• “Passing as American: On Immigration, Whiteness, and Identity Construction in Late 19th Century United States,” Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion Unit, American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, Georgia, March 2018

• “Free to Be Like Me: Constructing Freedom in the Public Sphere,” Freedom of (and from) Religion: Debates Over the Accommodation of Religion in the Public Sphere, UCSB, Santa Barbara, California, April 2015

• “Shifting the Focus: Understanding the Teller Behind the Tale,” Religion, Archaeology, and the Law Panel, Rocky Mountain Great Plains Region, American Academy of Religion, Omaha, Nebraska, March 2015

• “Mind the Gap: Shifting the Focus of Discourse on Myth,” Undergraduate Research in Method and Theory of Religion Unit, Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion, American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, Georgia, March 2014

Invited Academic Presentations

• “Manufacturing ‘American Islam’: On Inclusivity and Domesticating ‘the Other,’” Guest lecture for the “Religion in the Public Sphere: Topics, Theories, and Methods” MA Seminar, Institute for the Study of Religion, Leibniz University Hannover, Dec. 2024

• “‘Translating Difference’ and Thesis Proposal Writing,” Presentation/discussion for MA Colloquium Seminar, Institute for the Study of Religion, Leibniz University Hannover, Apr. 2024

• “Regimes of Belief,” Guest lecture for RELI 101: Introduction to Religious Studies, Department of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Aug. 2021

• Panelist, JPE 610: Putting the Humanities PhD to Work with Katina Rogers, Jones Program in Ethics, Laney Graduate School, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, March 2021

• “Immigration and American Catholicism,” Guest lecture for HC 505: History of Christianity in America, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Feb. 2019

• “What Makes Yoga Religious?: On Definitions and Classification,” Guest lecture for RLST 2400: Religion in Contemporary Society, Dept. of Religious Studies, CU Boulder, Nov. 2015

• Panelist, From Hobby Lobby to Mauna Kea: Engaging Religious Diversity and Religious Freedom in the Classroom, the Campus, and in the Courts Roundtable, Building the Road Map: Diversity and Inclusion Summit, University of Colorado Boulder, November 2015

Public Scholarship

Bulletin for the Study of Religion

• Repost: “The Problem with the Primacy of Primary Sources”

• “Revolutionary Love: Scholars Respond to the AAR’s 2016 Conference Theme: U Colorado Graduate Students”

Culture on the Edge

• “Fabricating Genres”

• “Universalizing ‘English’ Football, Part II”

• “Making Football English, Part I”

• “On the Spot with Andie Alexander”

• “Teaching ‘Just the Facts’”

• “Real Cheese and the Eucharist: The Rhetoric of Dietary Restrictions”

• “‘Guess Who?’: A Game of Differentiation”

• “A Good Fake or a Bad Fake?”

• “When You Don’t Look the Part”

• “Green, St. Patrick’s Day, and the Politics of Identity”

• “Language Games: On Neutrality and Hijab”

• “Indexing as Meaning-Making”

• “The Politics of Activism: On Rhetoric and Power”

Queen’s School of Religion Blog (formerly Engaging Religion)

• “What Holiday Is Next?”

Sowing the Seed

• (Invited response) “The Bible, Race, and Indigeneity: A Response”

• “Rethinking American Religions: Failing to Explain America or Continually (Re)Shaping It?” (Partial post; edited for length by blog curator)

Studying Religion in Culture

• “The Conference: A Response”

• “And must it leave when you have gone away?”

• “On Immigration, Identity, and White Privilege”

• “It’s Fall, Y’all”

• “The Problem with the Primacy of Primary Sources”

• “Home, Sweet Home”

• “Stereotyping Gender: I’m 100% Masculine”

• “Classification Matters: Mindfulness in the Classroom”

• “The Effects of ‘Bad Religion’”

• “You don’t know what that means!”

• “Is It Really About the Color?”

• “‘It’s what makes Thanksgiving Thanksgiving’”

• “It’s Andie, with an ‘ie’”

• “Experience is in the Eye of the Beholder”

• “The Modernity of History”

• “Mind the Gap”

Interviews and Podcasts

Culture on the Edge

• “Identity or Identification,” with Craig Martin, Russell T. McCutcheon, Monica R. Miller, Steven Ramey, K. Merinda Simmons, Leslie Dorrough Smith, and Vaia Touna

The Religious Studies Project

• “Harm, AI, and Religion | Discourse! June 2023,” with Craig Martin and Paul-François Tremlett

• “Charting the Playful & Proper Study of Religion,” with Sam Gill

• “Navigating the Discursive Study of Religion,” with Teemu Taira

• “Shifting the Focus of Graduate Education in the Study of Religion,” with Carmen Becker

• “Unruly Women: Neocolonialism, Race, and Discrimination,” with Falguni A. Sheth

• “Curanderismo Roundtable,” with Israel L. Domínguez, Brett Hendrickson, and Jennifer Koshatka Seman

• “Ukraine Invasion, Philippine Elections, and Misinformation | Discourse! March 2022,” with Paul-François Tremlett and Daniel Gorman, Jr.

• “The Critical Humanist Study of Islam,” with Khurram Hussain

• “The Strange Charm of Gnosticism,” with David G. Robertson

• “Religious Symbols, Secularism, and Culture Wars,” with Matt Sheedy

• “Deconstructing ‘Religion’ in Contemporary Japan,” with Mitsutoshi Horii

• “How Critical Race Theory became a Moral Panic | Discourse! June 2021,” with Ishanika Sharma and K. Merinda Simmons

• “On Human Remains | Discourse! May 2021,” with David G. Robertson, Breann Fallon, and David McConeghy

• “Conspiracy Theories, Public Rhetoric, and Power,” with David G. Robertson

• “Comparing Methods in Christian Origins,” with Willi Braun

• “On the Tantricization of Jain Ascetic Rituals,” with Ellen Gough

• “Presidentialism, or ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’ | Discourse! October 2020” with Hina Muneeruddin and Leslie Dorrough Smith

• “Reflections on ‘Thinking with Jonathan Z. Smith,’” with Aaron W. Hughes

Scholarly Collaboration

Culture on the Edge

A peer reviewed blog maintained by a 16-person international scholarly collaborative which produces work ranging from pithy blog posts to edited volumes and book series focusing on strategies of identification.

• Online Curator, June 2013-Present

  • Duties: manage the blog; format and edit blog posts; write press-release posts to publicize the contributors’ latest work; maintain the Facebook and Twitter pages; coordinate with guest contributors and regulate guest posts on the blog; and liaise with professors interested in inviting Edge members for a class visit.

• Contributor, August 2017-Present

The Religious Studies Project

An international collaborative based in the U.K. which produces podcasts, commentary, and pedagogical resources on the social-scientific and critical study of religion.

• Managing Editor, April 2021- Present

• Internship Coordinator, January 2022-Present

• Transcription Editor and Web Editor, August 2020-April 2021

• Interviewer, July 2019-Present; Find my podcasts here.

Awards & Fellowships

• Exposé Scholarship, Graduierten Akademie, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Apr.–Sept. 2024

• Conference Travel Award (International), Professional Development Funds, Laney Graduate School, Emory University, June 2019

• Graduate Fellowship, Department of Religious Studies, University of Colorado Boulder, Fall 2016

• Conference Travel Award, Department of Religious Studies, University of California Santa Barbara, April 2015 (awarded but declined)

• Travel Award, Department of Religious Studies, University of Colorado Boulder, April 2015

• Graduate Teaching Scholarship, Department of Religious Studies, University of Colorado Boulder, Spring 2015; Fall 2015; Spring 2016

• Outstanding Student in the Academic Study of Religion, Department of Religious Studies Scholarship, University of Alabama, 2012–13

• Silverstein Scholar, Department of Religious Studies Scholarship, University of Alabama, 2010–11; 2011–12

• Outstanding Student in Italian, Department of Modern Languages and Classics Scholarship, University of Alabama, 2009–10