Biography
I am a cultural anthropologist and associate professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My ongoing ethnographic research in the Caribbean explores the intersections of religion, culture, and identity. Guided by theoretical concerns from gender and power to race and religious difference and grounded in a firm commitment to ethnographic methodology and anthropological inquiry, my work addresses contemporary issues related to gender performance and identity, spiritual authority and legitimacy, and religious heterodoxy and pluralism. Though trained as an anthropologist, my research and publishing are interdisciplinary in scope crosscutting anthropology, religious studies, women and gender studies, and Latin American and Caribbean studies.
Brendan Thornton
Research Interests
Caribbean and Latin America
Anthropology of Christianity
Religions of the African Diaspora / Black Atlantic
Comparative Caribbean Ethnology
Gender and Masculinity
Ethnographic Fieldwork Experience
Dominican Republic
Trinidad and Tobago
U.S.A.
Research Languages
English
Spanish
Brendan Thornton