About

I’m a historian of religions working at the intersection of esotericism, ecology, and American religious history. My academic research focuses on the ways that environmental phenomena shape religious belief and behavior. I am currently Assistant Professor and Gibson Drinko Chair in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania.

I earned my Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Rice University in Houston, Texas in 2022, where I worked on the Archives of the Impossible project with Jeffrey J. Kripal. I was a 2021-2022 Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

My first book, American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse in the Life of Johannes Kelpius (Oxford University Press 2024) explores environmental knowledge, climate change, and esoteric Christianity in early modern Europe and Pennsylvania.

I am currently at work on a second book project, Contact Zone: Supernature and Culture in the Big Thicket, under contract with Columbia University Press. Contact Zone is a constructive theory of religion disguised as equal parts natural history, philosophy of ecology, and paranormal studies via a particular bioregion of east Texas.

I currently serve as co-chair of the Esotericism Unit of the American Academy of Religion. I recieved graduate certificates from the Center for Critical and Cultural Theory, the Center for Teaching Excellence, and for the study of Gnosticism, Esotericism and Mysticism in the Department of Religion at Rice. My writing has appeared in magazines like Hellebore and in academic journals like American Religion, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, Correspondences: A Journal of Esotericism, and Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft.