Seth Schermerhorn
Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Director of American Studies
Seth Schermerhorn specializes in the interdisciplinary study of indigenous traditions, particularly in the southwestern United States. Although Schermerhorn has worked with several indigenous nations, he works most extensively with the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona. Schermerhorn teaches classes on indigenous traditions, Native American religious freedom, indigenous ecologies, pilgrimage, and global Christianities.
Recent Courses Taught
Native American Spirituality
Global Christianities
Sacred Journeys
Native Rituals and Religious Freedom
Imagining Religions
Native Ecologies
Native Christianities
Senior Project Seminar
Distinctions
- Wellin Museum Grant for Innovative Teaching
- Phillips Fund for Native American Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society
- Jacobs Research Funds Individual Grant
- Upstate-Global Collective Working Group Grants from the New York Six Liberal Arts Consortium, from an award by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Selected Publications
- "Movement and Indigenous Religions: A Reconsideration of Mobile Ways of Knowing and Being," Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief 18:1 (2022), 3-15. Co-authored with Meaghan Weatherdon.
- "The Politics and Poetics of O'odham Categories of Movement: Movement in Discourse and Practice," Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief 18:1 (2022), 61-76.
- “‘O’odham, Too’: Or, How to Speak to Rattlesnakes,” Native American Rhetoric, edited by Lawrence W. Gross (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2021), 103-126.
- “Comparison and the Academic Study of Indigenous Religious Traditions,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 32:4 (December 2020), 464-474.
- Walking to Magdalena: Personhood and Place in Tohono O’odham Songs, Sticks, and Stories, University of Nebraska Press, 2019.
More
- “Through Indigenous Eyes: A Comparison of Two O’odham Photographic Collections Documenting Pilgrimages to Magdalena,” Religious Studies and Theology: Interdisciplinary Studies in Religion, 36:1 (2017), 21-54. Co-authored with Lillia McEnaney ’17.
- “Global Indigeneity and Local Christianity: Performing O’odham Identity in the Present,” Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), edited by Greg Johnson and Siv Ellen Kraft, 192-203. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
- “Walkers and their Staffs: O’odham Walking Sticks by Way of Calendar Sticks and Scraping Sticks,” Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, 12:4 (December 2016), 476-500.
- “O’odham Songscapes: Journeys to Magdalena Remembered in Song,” Journal of the Southwest 58:2 (Summer 2016), 237-260.
- “Secularization by the ‘Sacred’?: Discourses of Religion and the San Francisco Peaks,” Eras Journal 11 (November 2009).
- “Christianity, Kachinas, Crosses, and Kivas: Religion, Resistance, and Revolt in Seventeenth Century New Mexico,” Next: The Graduate Student Journal for the Academic Study of Religion 1 (Fall 2007).
College Service
- Committee on Student Awards and Prizes
- Chapter Founder and Faculty Chapter Representative of Theta Alpha Kappa, the National Honor Society for Religious Studies and Theology
- American Studies Program Committee
- Humanities Organizing Committee
Professional Affiliations
International Association for the History of Religions
American Academy of Religion
North American Association for the Study of Religion
Society for the Study of Native American Religious Traditions
Native American and Indigenous Studies Association
American Anthropological Association
Society for the Anthropology of Religion
Western History Association
Appointed to the Faculty
2013Educational Background
Ph.D., Arizona State University
M.A., University of Colorado
B.A., Colorado State University
