Donovan Schaefer

Donovan Schaefer joined the Department of Religious Studies as an assistant professor 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 most recent book, Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin (Duke 2022) explores the intersections between affect theory, science, and critical approaches to the secular. In addition to his appointment in Religious Studies, he is Core Faculty in the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies and a member of the graduate group in Comparative Literature.