Rosalind I. J. Hackett
Home institution
University of Tennessee
Research project
Sacred Sound(s): Exploring the Sonic Dimensions of Gender and Religion
The goal of this project is to develop a more sonically aware approach to the study of gender and religion. It will explore the "sacred" sounds (not just music) made and heard by, associated with, or kept from women in a range of religious traditions, past and present.
Profile
Rosalind I. J. Hackett is professor and head of religious studies and adjunct in anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. From 2003-08 she was a Distinguished Professor in the Humanities. She received her PhD in religious studies from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1986, and prior to that taught at Nigerian universities for eight years. In 2000-01 she spent a year at Harvard University as a Liberal Arts Fellow in Law and Religion, Harvard Law School, and was a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at HDS. She was a Rockefeller Research Fellow at the Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame in 2003-04. She was appointed a Mellon Fellow at the University of Cape Town in Religious Studies in May 2014.
Hackett has published widely on religion in Africa, notably on new religious movements, religious media, gender and religion, regulation of religious diversity, and religion and conflict. Among her earlier works are New Religious Movements in Nigeria (1987, ed.), Religion in Calabar: the Religious Life and History of a Nigerian Town (1989), and Art and Religion in Africa (1996). Recent publications include: Proselytization Revisited: Rights Talk, Free Markets, and Culture Wars (2008, ed.) and Displacing the State: Religion and Conflict in Neoliberal Africa, (co-edited with James H. Smith, 2012). The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism (co-edited with Simon Coleman, 2015) and New Media and Religious Transformations in Africa (co-edited with Benjamin Soares, 2015) are forthcoming. Her current research is on sound in/as religion.
Hackett has been very active in the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) and was reelected President from 2010-15). She is the cofounder of the IAHR Women Scholars Network. She was a founding member of the African Association for the Study of Religions and has also served as President of the North American Association for the Study of Religions. She is part of the founding steering committee of the African Consortium on Law and Religion Studies, founder/coordinator of the Jazz for Justice Project and the UT Gulu Study and Service Abroad Program in Northern Uganda.
WSRP lecture
Course
HDS 2115: Sound, Gender, and the Study of Religion (spring 2015)