Richard Hoffman Reinhardt

research/writing site

This is primarily a space for research, writing, and notes that I am not sure what to do with yet. Most of my thinking and writing involves questions in the history and anthropology of religion, often with contemporary entanglements -- political and theoretical -- in mind.

In addition to some writing you'll also find information on Conversions Cartel, a virtual reading group that I animate, sponsored by the Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop on Religion in the Premodern Atlantic at the University of Michigan. My cv is also here.

Please cite anything here that you find to be of use according to Creative Commons guidelines.

(Background photo is from Jozani Mangrove Forest in Zanzibar, photo credit Michael J.T. Busch, 2018)

Home: About

Bio Blurb

I am a PhD Candidate in the Interdepartmental Program in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan and am currently a visiting student at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, with support from the Lurcy Foundation. I study the anthropology and history of Christianity in global contexts, African and African diasporic religions, psychoanalysis, and theories of religion. My dissertation focuses on the history of Capuchin-Franciscan missionaries in the Seventeenth Century in relation to conversion, enslavement, early modern racial assemblages, and categories like idolatry, fetishism, and superstition.

(Photo credit Amanda Reid, 2017)