Elijah Siegler

Elijah Siegler is originally from Toronto, Canada, and he has been teaching at the College of Charleston since 2004. In his own words: I am a historian of American religions, with expertise on new religious movements, religion and popular culture, and Asian religions in America. I teach in all of the above areas and also various introductory courses, and the religions of China and Japan. All my courses are structured around a series of problems or issues and they use the latest scholarship, often books that are still in manuscript form. My research is an extension of my teaching as well as of my personal interests (traveling, watching TV and movies) and aims to be accessible and teachable. Whatever the subject, my research is theoretically informed by questions of the translation, transmission, and appropriation of religions. My overall research program continues to develop the seeds planted in graduate school more than 10 years ago— showing how television can be as much a religious art as film, fine art or music, and investigating the lost history, current manifestations and future trends of American Daoism—while also committing to new avenues of research in the fields of pedagogy and of religion and tourism. I am currently finishing up a co-written book, titled Dream Trippers: Global Daoism and Predicament of Modern Spirituality about the relationship between a Chinese Daoist monk and two Americans who travel frequently to China, a New Age teacher of commercialized inner alchemy and a scholar-practitioner of Daoism. I am also presently writing an article called “Working Through the Problems of Study Abroad Using the Methodologies of Religious Studies” based in part on my own experiences teaching College of Charleston students in India and China. It will hopefully be the lead article in a special issue of the Journal of Teaching Theology and Religion, on Teaching Religious Studies Abroad, for which I will be the guest editor.