Our humanities lab draws together a multidisciplinary research team of faculty, artists and filmmakers, and students, convened as a series of “mobile think tanks.” We attend, observe, and participate in these festivals together: interviewing participants, organizers, and political leaders. The mobile think tank gathers in situ with local intellectuals in a seminar workshop format to discuss, analyze, and interpret each particular religious event in relation to the themes of immigration, race, globalization and political and civic culture.
MEET OUR RESEARCH TEAM
Dr. Deepak Sarma, professor of South Asian religions and philosophy at Case Western Reserve University, is the author of Classical Indian Philosophy: A Reader (2011), Hinduism: A Reader (2008), Epistemologies and …
VIEW PROFILE
Valentina Napolitano, is professor of Anthropology at University of Toronto. She is the author of Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return (Fordham University Press, 2015) …
VIEW PROFILE
Megan Asaka is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Riverside, where she specializes in Asian American history, urban history, and public …
VIEW PROFILE
Jonathan Ritter is an ethnomusicologist whose research focuses on the indigenous and Afro-Hispanic musical cultures of Andean South America. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. …
VIEW PROFILE
Catherine Gudis is Director of the Public History Program at UCR and teaches classes in public history and 20th century U.S. history, building on her …
VIEW PROFILE
“Spencer Dew is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Centenary College of Louisiana. A literary critic and scholar of American and new religious movements, his …
VIEW PROFILE
Graduate Student Principal Investigators
Daisy Vargas holds a Masters degree from the University of Denver in Religious Studies and is completing her doctoral studies at UC Riverside. Her expertise …
VIEW PROFILE
Matthew Casey earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in Religious Studies at the College of Charleston (2009) and the University of California, Riverside (2011). At Riverside, …
VIEW PROFILE
Cristina Rosetti, graduate student in Religious Studies at University of California, Riverside. Rosetti’s research focuses on American religious history and contemporary religion in the United …
VIEW PROFILE
Santos Z. Roman is a doctoral student in Public History at the University of California, Riverside. He did his undergraduate studies at the University of the …
VIEW PROFILE
Kristen Hayashi is a Ph.D. student who is currently engaged in the study of both Public History and the American West at the University of …
VIEW PROFILE
Connie Gagliardi is a PhD student in the department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Professor Valentina Napolitano and Dr. …
VIEW PROFILE
David Chávez is a Ph.D. student with a B.A. in History and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles (2008). He is …
VIEW PROFILE
Charles Townsend is a Doctoral Candidate and Associate Instructor in Religious Studies at UC Riverside. His research and teaching interests include Asian religions, American religions, …
VIEW PROFILE
Jeremy Guida, project curator, holds a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard University (Divinity School) with an emphasis in religion and culture. He currently serves …
VIEW PROFILE
The Humanities Lab as a Method for the Study of Religion.
Our eclectic group of researchers includes students, professors, artists, filmmakers, and journalists. We have spent the better part of three years participating in public ritual events, attending dozens of religious festivals across the state. We have thrown colors at Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, with those who have inherited Hindu traditions and those who have adopted them in the United States. We have processed in the streets of downtown Los Angeles with Peruvian immigrants as they sway to and fro under the heavy weight of their penitential andas. We have wept at altars for the dead on Dia de los Muertos. We have waited for the Virgin to appear in a desert sky in the middle of the Mojave. We have joined aging internees on their annual pilgrimage to Manzanar, the Japanese internment camp, where we braced against the harsh winds and dust to chant, and dance, and pray.
Principal Investigators
Principal InvestigatorJennifer Scheper Hughes directs (with Amanda Lucia) the ISIR festivals project funded by a grant from the Luce Foundation: Religions in Diaspora and Global Affairs …
VIEW PROFILE
Principal InvestigatorAmanda J. Lucia (PhD, University of Chicago, 2010) is an Associate Professor in the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Riverside. Her research …
VIEW PROFILE
James Lee, Ph.D., UC Irvine Associate Professor of Asian American Studies and English, chair of the Department of Asian American Studies at UCI, and director …
VIEW PROFILE
Romi Mukherjee received his PhD from the University of Chicago where his thesis, in the history of religions, examined the politics of the sacred in inter-war …
VIEW PROFILE
Artists and Filmakers
James Ault is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and author whose work often deals with religion. His first film, Born Again, about life in a fundamentalist …
VIEW PROFILE
Independent filmmaker Ann Kaneko is known for her personal films that weave her intimate aesthetic with the complex intricacies of political reality. Often involving subjects …
VIEW PROFILE
Rea Tajiri is a New York based filmmaker and educator who has written and directed an eclectic body of dramatic, experimental and documentary films currently …
VIEW PROFILE