DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

      My future research agenda is focused on several projects. These projects are borne from a performance studies approach to rhetorical concepts of magic and ritual, with an emphasis on how individuals construct and perform alternative spiritual identities within communal settings, both in physical gatherings and virtually. In addition, each of these projects has the potential for both publication and live performance. The first is an expansion of my dissertation work, in which I investigate the trope of initiation within Western popular culture. Though my dissertation mostly focused on ritual, language, and activism, I have continually been writing articles that focus on the current popularity of what has been termed “occulture,” which refers to the confluence of occultism and popular culture. So far, I have published (or am in the midst of publishing) articles about occulture in cult television (genre based programs like The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer), reality television, comic books and children’s fiction (such as Harry Potter), and new media, including religious-oriented websites, online shopping, gaming, YouTube, and online “magical” training schools. By considering these various sites of occulture and how consumers produce and engage in discourses about alternative beliefs and structures, I interrogate how individuals function as producers of cultural and religious identity within the matrix of popular culture and media. This could lead to several book-length works on occulture and various media, as well as the publication of my revised dissertation. I am particularly interested in further developing my work on comics as visual rhetoric within the realm of occulture. Finally, I would like to begin researching on a possible article on the crossover between occulture and steampunk.

 

       My second project is an expansion of my recent chapter in the Handbook of Contemporary Paganism. I plan to undertake further ethnographic research and interviews about American festival culture. Although I will be focusing on gatherings that are ostensibly presented as “Pagan festivals,” my main interest is in examining broader cultural trends among festival participants that contribute to a counter-cultural form of spirituality not limited by any one particular theological or cultural belief system. Further, this work would examine rhetorical claims by those engaged with alternative spiritual culture. My chapter introduced a brief history of Pagan festivals in America, and in my further research, I wish to interview the elders of the various communities in order to demonstrate the evolution of this particular subcultural scene, and how its participants redefine ideological boundaries and apply these new definitions to their daily life and their views about community and social activism. My research will be published as a complete, book-length work that will contribute to current scholarship about alternative American religion and the study of American subcultures.

 

Finally, I have begun significant research, associated with my Explore Chicago class, on the history of Chicago as a locus for occultism and esotericism in America, particularly stemming from the first World Parliament of Religions in 1893. This project, which allows for collaboration with local historians and practitioners, has the potential for both academic and popular publishing.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.