Religion in the American West, Native American Studies, Religion and the Environment, Cultural Geography, Lived Religion
By combining historical analysis, ethnographic inquiry, and decolonial methodologies, my research argues late nineteenth-century American nation building included the creation of a national racial identity and political philosophy that both embraced democracy and excluded Native peoples and alternative religious identities. My analysis, however, shifts the scholarly discourse from a top-down, empire-centered examination of the American West to a study of multiple communities’ creative acts of resistance to sustain their lands and people. With a focus on spatial theory and place-based identities, I evaluate the ways in which western communities leveraged their religious identities to negotiate capitalism, new modes of labor, and what it meant to be American in the heartland of American myth making.
Publications
Current Projects
