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Item Daniel Boone and Joshua, the Mohican: American Lives and American Myths(The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021-11) Wheeler, Rachel; Religious Studies, School of Liberal ArtsThis article compares the life and legend of Daniel Boone (1734–1820) with that of his obscure contemporary, Joshua (1742–1806), a Mohican man whose life unfolded along a remarkably parallel, yet dramatically different course. Both men were born in the East, and moved steadily westward during their lifetimes, on roughly parallel routes. Both men were adept in Native and White ways. Yet Boone died of old age, while Joshua went to a fiery death as an accused witch at the hands of Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet. Boone became a legend during his own lifetime, while Joshua has remained consigned to a few footnotes. This article asks what narratives of America are possible with Joshua's story at the fore.Item Early American Music and the Construction of Race(University of California Press, 2021-12) Barnes, Rhae L.; Goodman, Glenda; Gordon, Bonnie; Ryan, Maria; Bailey, Candace; Garcia, David F.; Ramsey, Guthrie P., Jr.; Marshall, Caitlin; Eyerly, Sarah; Wheeler, Rachel; Religious Studies, School of Liberal ArtsItem Commentary: Pain, Stigma, and the Politics of Self-Management(Oxford, 2020-05) Jain, Andrea R.; Religious Studies, School of Liberal ArtsItem Western Esotericism in Brazil: The Influence of Esoteric Thought on the Valley of the Dawn(University of California Press, 2020-02) Hayes, Kelly E.; Religious Studies, School of Liberal ArtsThe Brazilian religion known as the Valley of the Dawn is an international new religious movement known for its eclectic cosmology and collective rituals performed by adepts dressed in ornate garments. Headquartered outside of Brasília, the Valley of the Dawn was founded in the 1960s by Neiva Chaves Zelaya (1925–85) a clairvoyant medium affectionately referred to as Aunt Neiva. This article highlights the work of Mário Sassi (1921–94) and the significance of esoteric thought in the development of the movement’s Doctrine. An early convert who became Aunt Neiva’s life partner, Sassi was an intellectual seeker who drew selectively on esoteric ideas popularized through theosophical and spiritist texts to interpret and systematize Aunt Neiva’s visions. Together Aunt Neiva and Mário Sassi created a Brazilian form of Western esotericism that today includes over 600 affiliated temples across Brazil and worldwide.Item ‘Namaste All Day’: Containing Dissent in Commercial Spirituality(Harvard Divinity School, 2019) Jain, Andrea R.; Religious Studies, School of Liberal ArtsItem The Transnational and Diasporic Future of African American Religions in the United States(Oxford, 2019-06) Curtis, Edward E., IV; Johnson, Sylvester A.; Religious Studies, School of Liberal ArtsThis article calls forth a vision for the future study of African American religions in the United States by examining how transnational contact and diasporic consciousness have affected the past practice and are likely to affect the future practice of Christianity, Islam, and African-derived, Orisha-based religions in Black America. It offers a synthesis of scholarly literature and charts possible directions for analyzing Africana religions beyond the ideological and geographical boundaries of the nation-state. The article focuses on two primary forms of imagined and physical movement: the immigration of self-identifying Black people from Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, Mexico, and other places to the United States; and the travel, tourism, pilgrimage, and other movement—whether physical or not—of American-born Black people to places outside the Unites States.Item Charlottesville, Exodus, and the Politics of Nostalgia(2017-08-22) Wheeler, RachelItem Review of Linford D. Fisher's The Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America(The University of Chicago Press, 2014) Wheeler, Rachel; Religious Studies, School of Liberal ArtsLinford Fisher’s The Indian Great Awakening joins a growing body of scholarship on Native American engagement with Christianity. Much of that work so far (including my own) has focused on particular individuals or communities. Fisher’s is the first to take a broader, longer scope to survey the landscape of Native engagement with Christianity in southern New England (Connecticut, Rhode Island, Long Island, and western Massachusetts) through the eighteenth century (1700–1820), and it offers a welcome contribution. Fisher’s aim is to understand Native encounter with Christianity “in the fullest possible context of local colonial interactions and the broader, transatlantic tugs of imperial power.”Item Review of Craig Atwood's Community of the Cross: Moravian Piety in Colonial Bethlehem(The University of Chicago Press, 2004) Wheeler, Rachel; Religious Studies, School of Liberal ArtsColonial Moravians are far more popular today than they ever were in the eighteenth century. Then, Moravians were suspected of being “papists” on account of their liturgical practices, mistrusted because of their close relations with Indians and slaves, and thought more than a little odd in their communal living arrangements. These qualities, combined with their prodigious record keeping, have proven enticing to sociologists, historians, and ethnohistorians alike, studying everything from the life course of religious movements (Gillian Lindt Gollin, Moravians in Two Worlds [New York, 1968], and Beverly Smaby, The Transformation of Moravian Bethlehem [Philadelphia, 1988]) to interracial religious communities (Jon Sensbach, A Separate Canaan [Chapel Hill, NC, 1998]) to the dynamics of ethnic identity in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania (Jane Merritt, At the Crossroads [Chapel Hill, NC, 2003]). All of the studies cited above treat Moravian belief and practice to a greater or lesser extent, but none goes so far as Craig Atwood’s new work in taking seriously the distinctive religiosity of the Moravian Bru¨dergemeine. Community of the Cross is a dual biography of the colorful Saxon Count, Ludwig von Zinzendorf (the main force behind the growth of the Moravian movement in the eighteenth century) and of the community in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which Atwood treats as the incarnation of Zinzendorf’s theology.Item Review of Gunlög Fur's A Nation of Women: Gender and Colonial Encounters among the Delaware Indians(Alexander Street, 2011) Wheeler, Rachel; Religious Studies, School of Liberal ArtsGunlög Fur's A Nation of Women is an ambitious book. It is essentially an overview of Delaware history and cultural change in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from a gender studies perspective. During this time, the Delaware were commonly referred to as women in diplomatic contexts, and Fur's book attempts to unpack the meanings behind this designation, first by examining the "roles and responsibilities of women" among the Delaware, and the "historical conditions that made such a gendered designation possible." She examines gender both as an "organizing principle for subsistence activities, division of labor and exchange, and dispersion of power" as well as "a process of thought and belief" that "finds sanction in the spiritual realm."
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