Elijah Siegler
Professor of Religious Studies
Education
- Ph.D. in Religious Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara
- A. in Comparative Study of Religion, Harvard University
Research Interests
- New religious movements
- Religion and popular culture
- Asian religions in America
- Religious Studies Pedagogy
Courses Taught
- RELS 101: Approaches to Religion
- RELS 105: World Religions
- RELS 118: Modern History of Religion
- RELS 120: Religion, Art & Culture
- RELS 205: Sacred Texts of The East
- RELS 210: Theories in the Study of Religions
- RELS 247: The Daoist Tradition
- RELS 248: Religious Traditions of China & Japan
- RELS 250: Religions in America
- RELS 280: Religion and Film
- RELS 298: Special Topics - Contemporary Daoism
- RELS 298: Special Topics - The Daoist Tradition
- RELS 298: Special Topics - The Religion of Trump
- RELS 315: New Religious Movements
- RELS 348: Asian Religions in America
- RELS 450: Senior Seminar
- RELS 451: Capstone
- ASST 105: Value & Tradition in Asian Civilizations
- HONS 175: Approaches to Religion - The Varieties of Religious Experience
- HONS 381: American Evangelicalism
- FYSE 134: First-Year Experience
- FYSM 160: American Evangelicalism
Publications
Books:
- Dream Trippers: Global Daoism and Predicament of Modern Spirituality(co-written with David Palmer), (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017)
- Coen: Framing Religion in Amoral Order(editor and author of three chapters), (Waco, Tex: Baylor University Press, 2016)
- New Religious Movements(Prentice Hall, 2007).
- “David Cronenberg: The Secular Auteur as Critic of Religion” Journal of the American Academy of Religion4 December 2012: 1098-1112 (to be reprinted in Film and Religion, S. Brent Plate, ed. (New York: Routledge, 2017)
- "Adventure Time and Sacred History: Myth and Reality in Children’s Animated Cartoons" a chapter in Religion and Popular Culture in America, 3rd edition, Bruce Forbes and Jeffrey Mahan, eds. in press, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017)
- “Television” in John C. Lyden and Eric Michael Mazur, eds. The Routledge Companion to Religion and Popular Culture(New York: Routledge, 2015), 41-64
- “Working through the problems of Study Abroad Using the Methodologies of Religious Studies” Teaching Theology and Religion 18 (2015): 37-45
- “Daoism beyond modernity: The ‘Healing Tao’ as post-modern movement,” in David Palmer and Liu Xun, eds. Daoism in the 20thcentury: Between Eternity and Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press), 2011
- “What Is American Daoism?” Yang Shengonline journal, May 2011
- “Globalization and Chinese Religions” (co-written with Richard Madsen) in David Palmer, Glenn Shive and Philip Wickeri, eds. Chinese Religious Life: Culture, Society and Politics(Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2011
- “’Back to the Pristine’: Identity Formation and Legitimation in Contemporary American Daoism” Nova Religio1 October 2010: 45-66
- “Is God Still In the Box? Religion in Television Cop Shows Ten Years Later” in Eric Mazur and Kate McCarthey eds, God in the Details:American Religion in Popular Culture, 2nd edition (New York: Routledge Press, 2010).
- “A Television Auteur Confronts God: The Religious Imagination of Tom Fontana” in Diane Winston, ed. Small Screen, Big Picture: Television and Lived Religion(Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2009), 401-426.
- “Trump’s Magical Appeal: A Dated Anthropologist Offers Clues” Religion Dispatches, July 19, 2016"
- “Sacred Matters of Coen” Sacred Matters, March 2016"
- “Reality as Revelation: “Hail Caesar!” is the Coen Brothers’ Most Religious Movie Yet” Religion Dispatches, February 24, 2016"
- “Do the Oscars snub films without redemptive messages?” OUP Blog, February 25, 2013"
- “Automation” uenci.es: a collaborative genealogy of spiritualities, Dec 22, 2011"