Donovan Schaefer joined the Department of Religious Studies in 2017, after spending three years as a lecturer at the University of Oxford. He earned his B.A. in the interdisciplinary Religion, Literature, and the Arts program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His master’s and doctoral degrees are from the Religion program at Syracuse University. After completing his PhD, he held a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Haverford College.
His research focuses on the role of embodiment and feeling in religion, science, material culture, and formations of the secular. His first book, Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power (Duke 2015) challenged the notion that religion is inextricably linked to language and belief, proposing instead that it is primarily driven by affects. His follow-up volume The Evolution of Affect Theory: The Humanities, the Sciences, and the Study of Power (Cambridge 2019) looked at the history of engagement between affect theory and the life sciences.
His most recent book, Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin (Duke 2022) explored the intersections between affect theory, science, and critical approaches to the secular. Wild Experiment won the Ludwik Fleck Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) and the International Society for Science and Religion book prize in 2023.
In addition to his appointment in Religious Studies, he is secondary faculty at the Annenberg School for Communication, Core Faculty in the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, and a member of the graduate group in Comparative Literature.
PhD, Syracuse University
M.A., Syracuse University
B.A., University of British Columbia
Theories of Embodiment, Affect, and Emotion
Material Culture Studies
Religion and Power
Science and Religion
Secularism Studies
Sacred Stuff: Religious Bodies, Places, and Things
Science and Religion
Religion and Evolution
Affect Theory and Power
Theory and Method in the Study of Religion
Religion and Cinema
Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin (Duke University Press, 2022)
The Evolution of Affect Theory: The Humanities, the Sciences, and the Study of Power (Cambridge University Press, 2019)
Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power (Duke University Press, 2015)
Read: What Is Affect Theory?
Read: Cogency Theory: An Essay on Our Intellectual Affects (from Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin)
Read: Buying into Conspiracy Theories Can Be Exciting - That's What Makes Them Dangerous at The Conversation.
Read: Material Mourning in the Secular Sculpture Garden at The Immanent Frame.
Read: Whiteness and Civilization: Shame, Race, and the Rhetoric of Donald Trump at Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies.
Listen: Is Secularism a World Religion? at The Religious Studies Project.
Core Faculty, Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
Member of the Graduate Group, Comparative Literature.
