Rosalind Hackett's Home Page
Note: the Yoruba door post and border design are taken from
Diane Fox's magnificent design for our 1996 Africa Week poster.
ACADEMIC CAREER
Born in Birmingham, in the
English Midlands (or ‘Middle Earth’ according to Tolkien), I
attended Edgbaston
High School for Girls
before heading north to Leeds
University. I was the
first student there to take a combined honors degree in French and Religious
Studies. As part of my degree, I spent one year teaching English in a school in
Grenoble, France,
and conducting research on France's
first ecumenical church. That was where I developed a taste for fieldwork,
skiing and French cooking, together with a new awareness of my liver. After
obtaining a postgraduate teaching diploma in 1974 from St. Luke's College, Exeter, I moved on to
King's College at the University
of London to do an M.Phil in Religious Studies. This was somehow carried out
part-time while I was teaching French, Religious Education, and physical
education at a Roman Catholic secondary school in Reading. It was at this school that I
learnt that teaching was definitely not for the faint-hearted.
Having decided that
archival research was not my cup of tea, I took off in the mid-1970s for Nigeria to
conduct research there on new religious movements, and religion and social
change. I ended up staying for eight life-transforming years (1975-83), during
which time I taught at the Universities of Ibadan and Calabar.
This research formed the basis of my two higher degrees (M.Phil
London, 1978 and PhD in Religious Studies, University of Aberdeen, Scotland,
1986) and many publications, notably my edited book, New Religious Movements
in Nigeria (1987) and Religion in Calabar: the
Religious Life and History of a Nigerian Town (1989). The latter is an
ethnographic and historical analysis of religious pluralism in the town of Calabar
in south-eastern Nigeria.
It involved a comprehensive mapping of the town's religious institutions
together with discussion of more popular religious developments.
I broke into the North
American scene in 1984 with a Copeland fellowship at Amherst College
in 1984, followed by two years of teaching and consultancy in Washington, D.C.
I was then lured further south to take up an appointment at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to serve as the resident
anthropologist in the department of Religious Studies, with special
responsibility for courses in indigenous, notably African, religions. Today I
teach courses in Anthropology of Religion, African Religions, and New Religious
Movements, Theory and Method in the Study of Religion, Human Rights and
Religion, and Religion and Art. I won a Research and Creativity award in 1991,
an Alumni Outstanding Teaching Award in 1995, a Lindsay Young distinguished
professorship in the College of Arts and Sciences 1998-2000 and a Distinguished
Professorship from 2002-2008. I am also an adjunct professor in the Department
of Anthropology, and so unabashedly favor double majors in Religious Studies
and Anthropology! I direct the Graduate
Studies (Master's) Program. For information on our program, click here.
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My book, Art and Religion in Africa (Cassell
1996, pbk 1998) kept me busy for five years
visiting museums, libraries, artists, and galleries in Europe, North America
and Africa. In it I argue that given the
conceptual orientation of much African art, and the study and appreciation of
Africa's rich and diverse artistic
traditions, remain incomplete without an understanding of the religious
dimension.
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I
also problematize the categories of art and religion
within the African context, and their varied interconnections. My own
"conversion" to taking art more seriously has led to other
publications and lectures. Greater attention to the material and expressive culture
in the academic study of religion is particularly revealing of gendered roles
and symbolism (and vice versa). This is discussed in an article which appeared
in the special issue of Religion on "Recent Research on Religion
and Gender, guest edited by Sylvia Marcos and myself. I have also been
interested by the roles of women in African religions, and have published a
number of pieces in this regard: "Women and New Religious Movements in
Africa" in Ursula King's Religion and Gender (Blackwell 1995),
"Women in African Religions," in Religion and Women, edited by
Arvind Sharma (SUNY 1993), and "From Exclusion
to Inclusion: Women and Bible Use in Southern Nigeria" in Davies and
Wollaston, eds., The Sociology of Sacred Texts (Sheffield Academic
Press, 1993). Over the years I have developed a strong interest in mermaids and water spirits. For the reasons why see a semi-autobiographical piece I did for an upcoming
exhibition on Mami Wata (curated by Henry John Drewal at UCLA Fowler
Museum).
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My interests in
art, gender and religion extend beyond the academic. This is a gate I commissioned
at the entrance to my (secret) garden.
It represents the Yoruba goddess of the waters, Oshun.
Executed in iron, it also pays complementary homage to Ogun,
the Yoruba god of iron. It was designed by the contemporary Nigerian artist Bolaji Campbell,
and made by metalworker Monica Thomeczek in 1996.
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Other
areas I have written on include New Age religion in Africa, "New Age
Trends in Nigeria: Ancestral or Alien Religion?" in Lewis and Melton, eds.
Perspectives on the New Age (SUNY 1992), and the study and teaching of
African religions. My earlier training as a teacher in Britain left its mark,
so see in this regard the special issues I guest edited of Religion (20,4:1990)
on "Images of African Religions" and Spotlight on Teaching
(1,2:1993) on "Teaching African Religions." An additional piece on
"Teaching African Religions through Art and Literature" appeared in
Bastian and Parpart, eds. (1999).
In the 1980s Nigeria's new religious
movements began to look more like transnational evangelical and Pentecostal
movements. The older, independent movements began to be eclipsed by the newer,
arguably American-style, born-again, spirit-filled churches often founded by
well-educated entrepreneurs. I went with the flow and shifted academic focus. I
not only examined different aspects of these movements, see, for example, my
"The Gospel of Prosperity in West Africa" in Roberts, ed. Religion
and the Transformations of Capitalism (Routledge,
1995), but also decided to track the global flows of these movements by
following some of their evangelists to Asia. I was lucky enough to receive a
research grant in 1993-94 from the Research Enablement Program of the Overseas Ministries Study
Center funded by the Pew
Charitable Trusts. This enabled me to travel to Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and South Korea to study the growing
connections between African and Asian Charismatics
(see my report in Pneuma 18,1 [spring 1996]).
Something of a
paradigm shift occurred in my work when I was invited to join the Proselytization Project at Emory University's
Law and Religion Program. After many years of working as a grassroots member
and organizer with human rights organizations such as Amnesty International in
Nigeria, Britain and the U.S., I was now encouraged to examine some of the human rights implications
of my own research-namely the impact of the greater militancy of the Christian
revivalist movements in Nigeria on issues of religious freedom and pluralism,
notably in terms of Christian-Muslim relations (see, for example, "Radical
Christian Revivalism in Nigeria and Ghana: Recent Patterns of Conflict and
Intolerance." In Proselytization and Communal
Self-Determination in Africa, ed. Abdullahi
A. An-Na'im [Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 1999]). Since then, I have participated
in conferences pertaining to international religious freedom in Oslo, Norway,
Provo, Utah,
and Washington, DC. My Utah
presentation, "Conflict in the Classroom: Educational Institutions in Nigeria
as Sites of Tolerance/Intolerance," appeared in the Brigham Young
University Law Review, 2000, 2. I wrote a short op ed piece on the U.S.
International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 for Religious Studies News
(Feb. 2001). I did a lengthy review for a Soundings
symposium of Martha Nussbaum's recent book, Women and Human Development:
the Capabilities Approach (Cambridge UP, 2000) with a focus on the
conflicts between religion and women's rights. For some ideas and
information relating to human rights, see my human rights page. For some
interesting websites pertaining to religious persecution and religious freedom,
click here.
FOR FURTHER DETAILS
SEE MY FULL
CV
CURRENT/RECENT WRITING
PROJECTS
One of my major
ongoing projects has been to complete a book commissioned by the U.S. Institute of Peace on religious conflict in
Nigeria.
It will be titled Nigeria: Religion in the Balance. It is hard to finish
as something always seems to be happening in Nigeria with regard to
religion. I have managed to publish a
piece (2005) on the infamous, apocalyptic Maitatsine
movement, an extremist Muslim group that wrought death and destruction on the
city of Kano,
in Northern Nigeria in December 1980.
I have just finished
co-editing a book, Religion in African
Conflicts and Peacebuilding with Sakah Mahmud and
James H. Smith for the University
of Notre Dame Press. The work stems from our collaboration as
Rockefeller Visiting Fellows at the Joan B. Kroc
Institute of International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame in 2003-04.
We helped organize a conference on this topic in Jinja, Uganda, in April 2004.
Another current
project is the preparation of the book I am editing on Proselytization
Revisited: Rights Talk, Free Markets, and Culture Wars (London:
Equinox Publishers). It contains nearly
twenty chapters from authors around the world.
It will appear in 2007.
As a result of my Rockefeller Fellowship at the Kroc Institute at the
University of Notre Dame from 2003-04, I became more interested in the role of
religion in the public sphere. See the
piece I wrote for the Brigham Young Law
Review “Rethinking
the Role of Religion in Changing Public Spheres: Some Comparative
Perspectives” (2005). I have
also explored these questions in terms of the new attention to global religious
violence, and the responses of scholars of religion for a keynote address for
the British Association for the Study of Religion in 2003: “The Response of Scholars of Religion to Global Religious
Violence” (2004).
In 2003 I completed
a major overview of religion and human rights "Human
Rights: An Important and Challenging New Field for the Study of Religion"
for a significant new text, New Approaches to the Study of Religion
(eds. Geertz, Antes, and Warne, Mouton de Gruyter,
2003). My critical overview of the field of Anthropology of Religion
appeared in the Penguin
Companion to the Study of Religion (ed. Hinnells, 2005).
A couple of years
ago I took time out to reflect upon my "fieldwork" over the
years. It is the closing piece of a set of essays for Method and
Theory in the Study of Religion (2001) by mainly historians of religion,
recounting and analyzing their experiences in the field. I also consider
my "Prophets, 'False Prophets' and the
African State: Emergent Issues of Religious Freedom and Conflict" (for
a Nova Religio (April 2001) symposium on
current relationships between new religions and the state around the world) to
be one of my more important pieces. This has been updated and now forms
part of a book edited by Phillip Lucas and Tom Robbins, The Future of New Religions in the 21st Century (Routledge, 2003).
CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS
I have long had an
interest in the media, particularly the broadcast media--stemming from my days
as a student intern at the BBC in Birmingham (I was actually offered a career
opening in production, but turned it down, preferring to stay in academe).
Given that the transnational, revivalist religious groups that I research have
skillfully appropriated modern media technologies, and that I have written on
visual religious culture, it seemed logical me to start taking the growing
intersections of religion and media in Africa
more seriously. I published a preliminary piece on this topic,
"Pentecostal/Charismatic Appropriations of Modern Media Technologies in Nigeria and Ghana"
which appeared in the Journal of Religion in Africa in 1998. See also "Managing
or Manipulating Religious Conflict in the Nigerian Media".
My current research
focuses more on how the rise of religious media in many parts of Africa, particularly in the current phase of
deregulation, is generating new forms of competition and conflict between
religious groups. Radio and television are fast becoming the sites where
religious discourses and identities are shaped and contested. I plan to write a full-length comparative
study of religious media in Africa, and am in
the early stages of planning a co-edited book, Media and Religion in Africa: Innovation, Imagination, Transformation, with Ben Soares.
TEACHING
Each fall I teach
the African Religions course. As usual, it is a challenge
to do justice to the rich cultural and religious diversity of the world's second
largest continent--ranging from the plethora of local and indigenous forms of
religious practice through the various manifestations of Christianity and Islam
to African-derived religions in the New World,
namely the much-misunderstood vodou and santeria.
See, in this
connection, a short piece
on "Teaching African Religions through Art and Literature" which
appeared in Bastian and Parpart, eds. Great Ideas
for Teaching About Africa (1999) (a very
useful book for any Africanist or anyone who would
like to include African material in their courses).
Each spring I teach
one of my favorite courses, Anthropology of Religion. Thanks to a mistake
I made a few years ago in forgetting to order an ethnographic novel for the
course, students now choose their own. This has led us into examining
more closely and critically the plethora of popular anthropological texts on
the market which deal with spirituality, especially shamanism! I also enjoy teaching the Theory and Method
course in our Master’s program, when I can—although admit to my
graduate students that I came to an appreciation of theory late in the game.
Spring Semester 2003
was the teaching experience of a lifetime as it was Africa Semester at the University of Tennessee! Thanks to incredible support from the
university administration and various departments we put on a variety of
exhibitions, lecture series, and concerts.
The whole semester was an interdisciplinary eye-opener for all faculty
involved.
I have gleaned much
from my students over the years. Please
see my JOY OF LEARNING page for learning and studying tips.
PREVIOUS
TEACHING PROJECTS
PROFESSIONAL
ACTIVITIES
I was elected to the
post of President of the International
Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) at the 19th
World Congress in Tokyo, Japan in March 2005. The position runs until 2010. I am a founding member and Treasurer of the African
Association for the Study of Religions, and a past President of the North
American Association for the Study of Religion. In 1997, I was elected to the
American Association for the Study of Religion, and have served on the
Executive Committee.
I helped plan
the 1998 annual meeting at Carleton College, Northfield,
MN on "The Scholar of
Religion Responding to Situations of Controversy, Conflict, and Change."
As Program Chair of the
IAHR World Congress in Durban, South Africa, August 5-12, 2000, I was
responsible for coordinating an international program committee and developing
a comprehensive program which reflects the varied interests of a global
organization (to view the program, CLICK HERE).
I also belong to the
American Academy of Religion, the African Studies
Association, the American Anthropological Association, the Arts Council of the
African Studies Association, and the Society for the Scientific Study of
Religion. Even though an expatriate, I still keep up my membership with the
British Association for the Study of Religion. Currently I serve on two lively
and intellectually stimulating steering committees at the AAR,
the Religion, Media, and Culture Group, and the Law, Religion and Culture
Group. Selecting papers and panels each
year is a way of staying on top of current scholarship in one’s field.
PREVIOUS PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
CAMPUS AND OUTREACH ACTIVITIES
The "hats"
I wear as a public scholar of religion not unnaturally reflect my personal
concerns and academic trajectory. Perhaps the biggest contribution that I make to campus life and
the wider community is to share my experiences of other cultures, and to
encourage others to travel. I was a longstanding member of the Council on
International Education at UTK up
until 2000. Now there is a major campus initiative on International
and Intercultural Awareness. As a scholar who focuses on Africa, I am keen
to combat the negative images of Africa in the media, as well as the general
dearth of knowledge about this great and vast continent. (See a great image which
proves how large Africa is.) I have also
worked annually with the African
Students Association to organize Africa Week at the University
of Tennessee, Knoxville. This is a multi-media event which
has grown from strength, seeking to promote awareness of, and interest in,
African issues and cultures. I try never to miss the International
Cultural Festival on our campus in April as the food is unfailingly good!
I am long-time
member of Amnesty International, having
helped establish the organization in Nigeria in the early 1980s. At UT, I have served actively as a faculty
advisor with the ever-thriving UT
campus chapter. The "stress-reducing, world-changing Friday afternoon
teas" that I used to arrange at a local coffee shop for student activists
proved mutually beneficial, and paradoxically calming and energizing!
In 2003, I served as
a member of the Steering Committee for the historic and highly successful
Africa Semester at the University
of Tennessee. It was
doubtlessly one of the most ambitious Africa Semesters ever organized on a
college campus! We brought to town some of Africa's
best musicians, artists and scholars. For details see the Africa Semester website. One of the big hits was the residency of one
of South Africa’s
leading jazz musicians, Zim Ngqawana. He
delighted the campus and local clubs with his avant-garde jazz, which draws on
his traditional Xhosa roots as well as the strains of Scandinavia, Cuba,
John Coltrane, Max Roach, and a host of others!
Read a rave
review of his music that we were able to enjoy.
Nowadays, I enjoy talking to community
or campus groups about my work and professional concerns. The requests tend to
center around religious terrorism and fundamentalism, the art and religion of
Africa, and the plight of the lost and invisible children caught up in the war in Northern Uganda. The
piece that I wrote following my trip to Northern Uganda
in April 2004, “Who
Goes to Gulu? The Lord’s
Resistance Army and the Forgotten War in Northern Uganda.”
Peace
Colloquy (Kroc Institute, Notre Dame) has drawn me into broader efforts in
this country to bring attention to the plight of the lost and stolen children
in particular. It was quite frankly one
week that changed my outlook on life for ever, being shocked by what I saw,
moved by the efforts of people to survive, and inspired by the peacebuilders, notably Archbishop John Baptist Odama and Rtd. Bishop McCleod Baker Ochola
II. I plan to take a team of faculty
members from UT to teach for a month in the summer at Gulu University,
once hostilities cease. You can view
some of the photos that I took in the refugee
camps, the night-commuter children’s camp, and the army barracks.
In March 2006 I
wrote another short piece,
"Northern Uganda's War-Sick Children Move into the Media Spotlight,"
for Sightings, a publication of the the Martin Marty
Center, the Institute for
the Advanced Study of Religion.
My interests in and
concerns for the suffering of the people in Northern Uganda resulted in my
organizing with a team of wonderful students a benefit concert on September 1,
2006 called "Knoxville Jazz for Justice." It was held at the World Grotto,
in Knoxville, and was a huge success. We are continuing the work to use
music, especially jazz, as a source of activism and "engaged entertainment."
In early 2007, we launched a benefit
compilation CD. For details on the CD and our goals and activities,
see the
KNOXVILLE JAZZ FOR JUSTICE PROJECT
website.
PREVIOUS CAMPUS AND OUTREACH ACTIVITIES
NEWS, CURRENT AND FUTURE
TRAVEL
In April 2006, I
gave a keynote address (in a cinema) on “Religion and Media: New
Intersections, New Conundrums, New Theories” at the II International
Symposium on Religions, Religiosities and Cultures at the Federal University of
Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS) - Campus
of Dourados, Brazil.
This is situated near to the famed eco-tourist region of West Central Brazil, known
as the Pantanal.
In early June 2006,
I travelled to Thessaloniki,
Greece for the
first conference organized by the Greek Association for the Study of
Religion. At the end of June, I shall
made a brief visit to Israel,
then attended two conferences in close succession on the area of my current
research, namely religion and media. In
early July I returned to Sweden
(where I was for a lecture tour in October/November 2005) for the Fourth
International Conference on Religion and Media at Sigtuna,
where I organized an Africa-oriented panel there and presented a paper. Then
I hopped to Basel
in Switzerland
to attend a small meeting with experts from around the world on religion,
media, and visual culture. In September 2006, I attended the European
Association for the Study of Religion in Bucharest, Romania, followed in
November by the biennial UNESCO/CIPSH conference, this time in Alexandria,
Egypt. In May 2007 I travel to Kolkata and Darjeeling, India, before
attending the
2nd
SOUTH
AND
SOUTHEAST
ASIAN
ASSOCIATION
FOR THE
STUDY
OF
CULTURE
AND
RELIGION
(SSEASR)
conference in Bangkok. After the conference, I travel to Cambodia.
Later in the summer, I shall be attending the 4th African Association for the
Study of Religion conference
in Botswana. This will be followed by a trip to Uganda with some students.
PREVIOUS TRAVELS
GENERAL INTEREST
Please visit my Joy of Gardening page. There you can read about my growing passion
for gardening, and the creation of the Good Karma Gardening Circle here in East Tennessee.
Jos, Nigeria January 2004
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Rosalind I. J.
Hackett
Last updated April 2007
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