Image credit: "School begins." N.Y. : Published by Keppler & Schwarzmann, 1899 January 25. Library of Congress.
RACHEL MCBRIDE LINDSEY
Saint Louis University
Department of Theological Studies
[For downloadable PDF, please click here.]
EDUCATION
2012 Ph.D. Princeton University, Department of Religion
2009 M.A. Princeton University, Department of Religion
2006 B.A. Missouri State University, Department of Religious Studies
EMPLOYMENT
Associate Professor of American Religion and Culture, Department of Theological Studies, Saint Louis University, 2022—
Assistant Professor of American Religion and Culture, Department of Theological Studies, Saint Louis University, 2019-2022
Assistant Professor (NTT), Department of Theological Studies, Saint Louis University, 2016-2019
Postdoctoral Research Associate, John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University in St. Louis, 2015-2016
Associate Director, John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University in St. Louis, 2013-2015
Visiting Assistant in Religion, Department of Religion, Florida State University, 2012-2013
COURSES TAUGHT at SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY
Undergraduate
Holy Stuff: Seeing and Studying Religious Objects (Ignite Seminar, CORE 1000)
Theological Foundations (THEO 1000)
Race and Religion in America (THEO 2333)
American Christianity (THEO 2350)
Arch City Religion (THEO 2700)
Introduction to Religions of the World (THEO 2710)
Religion, Art, and Politics in America (THEO 3930 | Special Topics S17)
Religious Freedom in America (THEO 3930 | Special Topics Su 17, F20)
Religion, Law, and Citizenship in the U.S. (THEO 4930 | Special Topics S21)
Graduate
Writing Religion: Academic Writing from CFP to First Book (THEO 6930 | Special Topics S20)
Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion (THEO 6000)
Religion and Culture (THEO 4930/5930)
Historiographies of American Religion (THEO 6980)
GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS, HONORS
Beaumont Scholarship Research Award, 2022-2023 ($10,000)
Mellon Faculty Research Award (internal), Summer 2021 ($2,500)
Donald G. Brennan Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching, Saint Louis University, 2021
Young Scholars of American Religion Fellowship, Center on Religion and American Culture, IUPUI, 2019-2022 (cohort extended due to COVID-19)
Advancing Public Scholarship on Religion and Theology Grant, Theology Program, Henry Luce Foundation, for “Lived Religion in the Digital Age,” August 2018— ($400,000)
Fund for Intellectual Renewal and Enrichment (FIRE) Grant, Saint Louis University College of Arts & Sciences, August 2018 ($550)—to host speaker on Religious Freedom in the United States
Spark Microgrant, for “Selma to St. Louis: The Theology of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Pursuit of Justice Fifty Years Later,” Office of the Vice President for Research, Saint Louis University, Spring 2018 ($1,000)
Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, Research Travel Grant, Summer 2018 ($1,000)
Co-Curricular Grant, Saint Louis University College of Arts and Sciences, SP21, FA20, SP20, SP18
Grace May Tilton subvention award, Princeton University Program in American Studies, 2015 ($6,500)
Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellow, American Council of Learned Societies, 2011-2012 ($28,000)
CONFERENCES AND INVITED LECTURES
CONFERENCES and INVITED LECTURES
Symposium Organizer:
“Religion in Place: Spaces | Borders | Bodies,” academic and public symposium organizer and convener (with Pauline Lee), Saint Louis University, October 10-12, 2019. (16 panelists and 2 public lectures)
Panel Organizer:
“Students as Producers Across SLU Theology Curricula,” 2018 Winter Institute, Reinert Center for Transformative Teaching & Learning, Saint Louis University
“Religion, America, and the Aftermath: An Open Dialogue on Teaching, Campus Engagement, and Community Action After Obama,” American Academy of Religion, November 2016
Religious Freedom and Civil Rights in America, Washington University in St. Louis, October 21, 2015 (symposium cancelled due to speakers’ illness)
“Unsettled: Critiquing Categories of Professional Identity in American Higher Education,” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, November 2014
“Image as Artifact: Discovering the Thingness of Photographs in American Religious History,” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, North American Religions Section, November 2013
“Beautiful Babies, Hidden Mothers, and Plasticized Prisoners: The Display of Bodies and Theories of American Religion,” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, North American Religions Section, November 2012
“Innovating the Religious Imagination: Religion and Technology since 1800,” Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, October 2011
Conference Presentations, Roundtables, and Responses:
Papers:
“Billfolds and Wallets,” Catholicism in 10 Objects, Roman Catholic Studies Unit, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, December 10, 2020.
“The Spirit Postmistress of the Midwest: The Scandalous Career of Rev. Mrs. Josie K. Fulsom,” Romance, Reverends, and Renegades: Scandal as Gilded Age History, Organization of American Historians, April 12-14, 2018
“All on the Table: Banality as Spiritual Inventory in Simon Dinnerstein’s Fulbright Triptych, 1971-1974,” The Living World Symposium, Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri-Columbia, September 22-23, 2017
“Material Religions in a Digital World,” Digital Religion-Digital Theology Panel, Digital Humanities 2017 Conference, Montreal, Canada, August 8-11, 2017 in absentia
“So Tangled Up in Living: Roy DeCarava's Visual Politics of Race and Religion in The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955),” Protestantism and the Materiality of Texts Symposium, Princeton University, April 20-22, 2017
“A New Testament,” Visual and Material Culture Studies Seminar, Washington University in St. Louis, March 1, 2017
“Religion and the Birth of American Photopolitics,” Making News: Religion, Politics and the Journalistic Construction of American Civil Society, Panel, International Society for Media, Religion, and Culture, Seoul, South Korea, August 1-4, 2016 in absentia
“Born Free and Equal: ‘Americanism’ in Ansel Adams’s Manzanar Photographs,” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, North American Religions Section, November 2015
“A Communion of Shadows,” Material Religion: Embodiment, Materiality, and Technology, Duke University, September 10-12, 2015
“What Her Absence Reveals: Paradigms of Presence and Absence in Nineteenth-Century Religion and Photography,” C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Third Biennial Conference, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, March 13-16, 2014
“‘To Perpetuate the Memory of Our Glorious Ancestry’: Coding Race in an American Bible,” Race and Religion in American History, Princeton University, March 7-8, 2014
“‘Weeping at the Truthful Likeness’: Sensing Spirits in Ghost Pictures, 1860-1900,” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Baltimore, November 23-26, 2013
“Haunting the Streets of Cairo: Visual Habits of Erasure and Disclosure in Nineteenth-century Holy Land Photography,” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Chicago, November 17-20, 2012
“Photography Begotten: Technologies of Religious Perception in the Early American Republic,” Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, Baltimore, Maryland, October 20-23, 2011
“The Light of the World: Vernacular Photography and American Religion, 1839-1910,” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, Georgia, October 30-November 1, 2010
“Framing the Humdrum on Hallowed Ground: Interrogating the Quotidian in Studies of American Religion and Vernacular Photography,” Stanford University Graduate Student Conference on the “Banality of Religion,” Stanford, California, May 21-22, 2010
“When the Twain Become One: Stereography and American Religion, 1860-1910,” Midwest American Academy of Religion Conference, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, March 26-27, 2010
“‘Yours in His Service’: Race and Religion in the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, 1930-1940.” Midwest American Academy of Religion Conference, Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois, April 2008
“Wiley J. Phillips and the Rhetorical Construction of Anti-‘Romish’ Textual Communities in the ‘Queen City of the Ozarks,’ 1890-1912.” Midwest American Academy of Religion Conference, Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois, April 2007
“‘Saintly Souls and Strong Bodies’: Muscular Christianity and Sexual Discipline in Nineteenth-Century America.” Midwest Region American Academy of Religion Conference, De Paul University, Chicago, Illinois, April 2005
Panelist:
“Digital Teaching and Research,” Religion and American Culture Biennial Conference, June 2-4, 2022.
“Religion and Its Many American Publics,” Lehigh University, April 7-9, 2019
“Public Scholarship and the Study of Religion,” Yale University, January 9-11, 2019
“Teaching Local Religion with Digital Humanities,” American Academy of Religion, Denver, November 2018
“Digital Futures of Religious Studies,” American Academy of Religion, November 2016
“Evidence of Truth Unseen: Beholding Religion in 19th-C. American Commonplace Photographs,” (Not)Seeing the 19th Century: Photographs, Archives, Absences, Seminar, 2016 C19 Conference, College Station, PA, March 2016
“The Birth of a Nation—A Century Later,” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, November 2015
“Seeing is Believing/Believing is Seeing: Visual Religion in the Legacy News Media,” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Religion, Media, and Culture Group, November 2014
“The Power of Objects: Studying Material Life and Culture,” Program in American Culture Studies Dinner Forum, Washington University in St. Louis, October 2014
“Strategies for the Academic Study of Religion: A Faculty Roundtable Discussion,” Politics of Religion, 12th Annual Florida State University Department of Religion Graduate Student Symposium, February 22-24, 2013
“New Scholarship Roundtable,” Sensational Religion: Sense and Contention in Material Practice, November 1-3, 2011, Initiative for the Study of Visual and Material Cultures of Religion, Yale University
Respondent:
“Religion, Gender, and Heteronormativity,” Politics of Religion, 12th Annual Florida State University Department of Religion Graduate Student Symposium, February 22-24, 2013
“The Aftermath of the War in America,” World War II and Religion Conference, Florida State University, November 29-December 2, 2012
Invited Lectures and Talks:
“Gods of Jesusland: Navigating Religious Diversity and Decolonizing the Study of Religion in the American Midwest,” workshop leader, Religious Diversity in the Land Grant University Classroom Series, University of Missouri, Columbia. Supported by the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, Spring 2021
“#ArchCityReligion: Rethinking Lived Religion from America’s Heartland,” First Friday’s Mass and Speaker Series, Office of Mission and Identity, Saint Louis University, February 7, 2020
“The Shadow of the Arch: Religion and Race in St. Louis,” University of Missouri, Religion in Missouri Lecture Series, March 2019
“#ArchCityReligion: Local Religion and Digital Humanities in Classrooms and Beyond,” University of Pittsburgh, November 11-12, 2018
“A Communion of Shadows: Religion and Photography in Nineteenth-Century America,” North Carolina State University, November 18, 2015
“In a Communion of Shadows: Religion, Race, and Nation in Nineteenth-Century American Photography,” Washington University in St. Louis, February 17, 2015
“A Communion of Shadows: Relics, History, and Beholding in Nineteenth-Century American Photographs,” University of Pennsylvania, January 21, 2015
“Shadows of the South: Photography and Religion from the Confederacy to the New Deal,” Vanderbilt University, November 3, 2014
“Buddhists and Beats in America,” Meadville-Lombard Theological School, July 24, 2013
“Hidden Mothers, Fallen Soldiers, and Photography Albums: Why Vernacular Photographs Matter to American Religious History,” Missouri State University, April 24, 2012