Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Seth Schermerhorn published a chapter in the Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), edited by Greg Johnson of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Siv Ellen Kraft of the University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway.
According to the publisher’s website, the book draws “upon the efforts of a diverse group of scholars working at the intersection of indigenous studies and religious studies” and “argues for new ways of conceptualizing the field of indigenous religion(s).”
Schermerhorn’s chapter, “Global Indigeneity and Local Christianity: Performing O’odham Identity in the Present,” offers a new way of conceptualizing indigenous religion(s) by examining the ironies of contemporary scholarship on indigenous religious traditions and unsettling “established ways of casting both Christianity and indigeneity through playful (therefore, serious) juxtaposition in the hope that both categories will begin to seem somewhat strange.”
Schermerhorn presented an earlier draft of the chapter in 2015 as a paper at the XXI Quinquennial World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions in Erfurt, Germany.
The Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), the chapter and the presentation are all part of “Indigenous Religion(s): Local Grounds, Global Networks,” a larger research project organized by Siv Ellen Kraft and Bjørn Ola Tafjord of the University of Tromsø.
