Richard Hoffman Reinhardt

Curriculum Vitae

Education

Ph.D. Anthropology and History, University of Michigan, September 2014-present (Candidacy, June 2017; ABD January 2018)

M.A. Anthropology and History (Awarded Fall 2017)

B.A. Double Major in Islamic World Studies and International Studies, DePaul University, September 2010-June 2014, summa cum laude

Awards and Honors

New World Comparative Studies Fellow, John Carter Brown Library (May 2019-August 2019)

Lurcy Fellow / Visiting Student at École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris (Academic Year, 2018-2019)

FLAS Fellow, Portuguese (Academic Year, 2017-2018)

Fellowship Seminar Participant, Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute (2017-2018)

FLAS Fellow, Portuguese, University of Chicago Summer Language Institute (Summer 2017)

Graduate Student Associate, Early Modern Conversions Project (Fall 2016-Fall 2018)

Rackham Conference Awards, University of Michigan, 2015-present (Total $3400)

Rackham Research Awards, University of Michigan, 2015-present (Total $1500)

Race, Law & History Graduate Student Fellowship ($2500 award for research expenses), Project Title: “Capuchin Charisma and the Law – A Life-and-Death Critique of Atlantic Slavery (1678-1686),” Program in Race, Law & History, University of Michigan, 2014-2015

DePaul Undergraduate Research Grant ($1750 award) to begin work on senior thesis, “Slaves as Sorcerers in Missionary Eyes: Magic, Modernity, and Affect in the Early Modern Caribbean” (Summer 2013)

Newberry Library Undergraduate Seminar Participant (one of four undergraduates from DePaul) “Exchange before Orientalism: Asia and Europe, 1500-1800” (Spring 2013)

Islamic World Studies Program (DePaul) tuition scholarship for the Study of Arabic at al-Qasid Institute in Amman, Jordan (Autumn 2012)

Best Undergraduate Essay, DePaul University Department of Writing Rhetoric and Discourse, “Vodoun and Resistance” (Summer 2012)

Teaching / Professional Experience

Graduate Student Instructor, University of Michigan

History 270 / American Culture 270 – “Religion in America” (Fall 2015)

History 357 / Women’s Studies 275 – “History of Witchcraft” (Winter 2016)

American Culture / Communications / Screen Arts and Culture 334 – “Race, Gender, Sexuality, U.S. Culture and Video Games” (Winter 2017)

Graduate Student Mentor

History 809 – “Pedagogy” (Fall 2017)

History 808 – “Pedagogy” (Winter 2018)

Coordinator, “Religion in the Pre-Modern Atlantic” Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop, University of Michigan (Fall 2015-Fall 2018)

Coordinator, Anthro-History Reading Group and Workshop Organizational Committee, University of Michigan (Fall 2015-Winter 2016)

Member, Gender JUST Chicago (2012-present)

Research/Teaching Assistant, Islamic World Studies Program, DePaul University (March 2011-June 2013)

Coordinator, New Sanctuary Movement Milwaukee, a project of Voces de la Frontera (September 2008-May 2009)

Capuchin-Franciscan Friar (2008-2012)

Live-in Community Member, Hayley House, Boston, MA (2007-2008)

Outreach Worker, Saint Agnes Day Room and Member of the Homeless Single Women's Shelter Task Force (West Chester, Pennsylvania)

Conference Presentations

2018 “Repetition: Beyond Adaptation and Retention.” Caribbean Philosophical Association, Annual Meeting. Dakar, Senegal.

2018 “Francis of Assisi’s Perfect Jouissance: Material and Affective Fragments from Early Franciscan Sources.” Presentation for Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop, “Doing Queer Studies Now.” University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.

2018 "Conversion, Adaptation, Retention: Thoughts on Deep Roots." Panel Title: "Facing the Deep African Past: Reflections on Rupture, Modernity, and Conversion in the African Atlantic." Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.

2017 Panel Curator. “Ritual, Law, and Spaces of Death.” Curated Panel in concert with Vincent Brown’s visit. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.

2017 “Converting Vestiges: Capuchin-Franciscan Missionaries and the Animal-Fetish-Slave Knot in Seventeenth-Century Kongo.” Conference Title: Transforming Bodies. Conference affiliated with the Early Modern Conversions Project. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

2016 Andrea da Pavia, Fetishism, and Benedetto’s Dog: A Capuchin-Franciscan Debate on Idolatry in Seventeenth-Century Kongo.” Graduate Student Workshop. Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.

2016 Panel moderator and discussant. “Religious Performance and Materiality.” Conference Title: Performance and Materiality in Early Modern Culture. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.

2015 “Critiquing Slavery and Sovereignty in the 17th Century Catholic Atlantic: Épiphane de Moirans’ Servi liberi seu naturalis macipiorum libertatis iusta defensio (1682).” Conference Title: Staging Sovereigny: Knowledge, Narrative, and Spaces of Governance. Graduate Student Conference. Duke University, Durham, NC (Abstract accepted, unable to attend).

2015 “Un ‘savoir missionnaire’ à la fin du XVIIe siècle : qu'est ce que le capucin Épiphane de Moirans avait appris sur l’esclavage atlantique.” Conference Title: Nouveaux développements de la recherche sur l’histoire de l’esclavage et des societés post-esclavagistes. EHESS, Paris, France.

2015 “Un ‘savoir missionnaire’ à la fin du XVIIe siècle : qu'est ce que le capucin Épiphane de Moirans avait appris sur l’esclavage atlantique.” Panel Title: “Roundtable Conversation: Looking for Non-Conventional Configurations in Colonial Slave Societies.” Conference Title: Many Faces of Slavery: Non-Traditional Slavery in the Atlantic World. Montpelier, France.

2015 “Psychoanalytic Practice and Temporality: A Review of Sexual Difference Between Psychoanalysis and Vitalism” Panel Title: “Author Meets Critics: Sexual Difference Between Psychoanalysis and Vitalism.” Association of American Geographers’ Annual Meeting. Chicago, IL.

2015 “Capuchin Charisma and the Law – A Life-and-Death Critique of Atlantic Slavery (1678-1686).” Race, Law & History Proseminar. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.

2013 “Gender JUST Chicago and Everyday Resistance to the Non-profit Industrial Complex.” Panel title: “Queer Left Activism in Chicago: Radical Knowledge and Social Justice.” American Anthropological Association’s Annual Meeting. Chicago, IL.

2013 “Intervention's Death Sentences: Writing Queer Arabs” (on representation and the Gay International in Iraq – U.S. Rep. Jared Polis and Ali Hili). Paper presented for Interventions in the Post-Colonial World (DePaul University). Chicago, IL.

2013 “The Colonial Missionary Self: Traveler or Pilgrim? Labat and Du Tertre in the Antilles.” Closing Conference for Newberry Library Undergraduate Seminar. Chicago, IL. (One of four out of twenty papers selected for special presentation to administrators from participating universities and Newberry Library staff and administration)

2012 “Interreligious Dialogue: Rethinking Multiculturalist Models.” Paper presented for DePaul Interdisciplinary Student Conference: Movements, Migrations, and Crossing Borders (DePaul University). Chicago, IL.

2012 “The Fiction of Interfaith Dialogue: A Critical Look at Shallow Encounters.” Panel presentation at World Catholicism Week 2012 (DePaul University). Chicago, IL.

2012 “Interreligious Dialogue as a Penitential Rite: Problematizing Power in the Space of the Christian-Muslim Dialogue Events in the United States.” Paper presented for Visions of Hope Conference (Boston College). Chestnut Hill, MA.

2011 Presentation on the role of US friars in organizing for immigrant rights at the International Capuchin Franciscan Conference on Migration. Ñaña, Perú.

Publications

2018 Review of António Vieira: Six Sermons, edited and translated by Mónica Leal da Silva and Liam Matthew Brockey (recently submitted to Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion)

2018 "Francis of Assisi’s Perfect Jouissance: Theorizing Conversion through Objects and Affects in Early Franciscan Fragments" (approx. 12,500 words, recently submitted to Material Religion)

Abstract. “Conversion” has often been used to designate an event or period of discrete and intense change, especially in relation to an individual’s belief and religious identity. The sources on Francis of Assisi’s conversion show how pleasure and unpleasure converged in relation to material objects and the affects that they helped to create and sustain. Among others, Francis of Assisi’s objects of conversion included lepers, cloth, fire, ice, and his own body. Instead of conversion as a discrete change in a predictable direction, taking the materials of Francis’s conversion as the primary objects of the story animates a sense of perfect jouissance, suggesting that conversion entails realignments between pleasure and unpleasure -- an experience Francis described, toward the end of his life, as “perfect joy.”

2016 "Sexual Difference, Beyond Construction." Part of a Book Review Forum on Sexual Difference between Psychoanalysis and Vitalism, edited by Arun Saldanha and Hoon Song. The AAG Review of Books.

2016. Review of Vodou in the Haitian Experience: A Black Atlantic Perspective, edited by Celucien L. Joseph and Nixson S. Cleophat. Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion.