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Dennis Kelley

Education: PhD, U.C.-Santa Barbara
Interests: Religious Traditions of Indigenous Peoples
Email: kelleydf@missouri.edu

My primary research focus is in the religious traditions of indigenous peoples, especially Native North Americans. My expertise includes religion and culture; religion and ethnicity; myth, ritual, and symbol theory; and religious identity.

I am interested in how social constructions such as ethnicity and gender relate to issues of belief and religious worldview. It seems to me that the primary role of the construct “religion” is to contribute to the organizational matrices that comprise what Pierre Bourdieu calls the “field,” – the setting in which each social actor is situated. In addition, religion can both provide and alter an individual’s social toolkit, thus becoming an important factor in the creation and maintenance of both individual and collective identity. Tribal people can use – and be used by – their status as “indigenous” in the navigation of contemporary circumstances influenced by religion: social, political, and economic power.

Teaching

Classes taught at Mizzou include

RS 2001: Indians and Missionaries
RS 2100: Indigenous Religions
RS 2110: Major World Religions
RS 3110H: History of Religion in Post-Civil War America
RS 3380: Native American Religions
RS 4110: Myth and Religious Symbolism
RS 4120: Studies in Ritual

Publications

Some recent publications include a co-edited three-volume encyclopedia of American Indian religions, a chapter in Religion and Healing in Native America: Pathways for Renewal titled “Alcohol Abuse Recovery and Prevention as Spiritual Practice,” and a chapter in Death And Religion in a Changing World titled “The Politics of Death and Burial in Native California.”

Current work in progress includes an article in review with The Journal of the American Academy of Religion titled “Ancient Traditions, Modern Constructions: Innovation, Continuity, and Spirituality on the Powwow Trail,” as well as a piece titled “Revitalization, Renewal, or Reprise: On The Modern Recapitulation of American Indian Religious Culture” In review with Wicazo Sa Review.