David Walker, University of California at Santa Barbara
This talk explores the lives and careers of “Brother Jonathan, The Battling Preacher” and “Don Leo Jonathan, The Mormon Giant”—two professional wrestlers with Mormon gimmicks, with careers spanning 1930 to 1980—as a way of understanding the commingled history of religion and popular culture in America. Their careers are as good a metric for the life of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 20th century as any other that we have. Perhaps even better, they demonstrate how religion and wrestling work together—how they shape and reflect each other—in the modern world.
David Walker is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of Railroading Religion: Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West (2019).
This talk will take place on Thursday, March 27th at 7:00 PM in the Brown Alley Room, Weinstein Hall.
Reghan Ruf, '21, majored in biology and religious studies at the University of Richmond. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in biogeochemistry at the University of Akron. Listen to her insights on how her studies in religious studies and biology have complemented each other.
Douglas Winiarski, professor of religious studies, was awarded the annual John M. Murrin Essay Prize for “Revisioning the Shawnee Prophet: Revitalization Movements, Religious Studies, and the Ontological Turn” for the best article published in Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal in 2024.
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Rhiannon Graybill, Marcus M. and Carole M. Weinstein & Gilbert M. and Fannie S. Rosenthal Chair of Jewish Studies, was tapped as founding co-editor for a new Bloomsbury book series called Sexing Scripture. The series publishes cutting edge research on gender, sex, sexuality, and religious texts.
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Mimi Hanaoka, associate professor of religious studies, has been named Associated Colleges of the South Mellon Academic Leadership Fellow for 2025–27.
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Rhiannon Graybill, Marcus M. and Carole M. Weinstein & Gilbert M. and Fannie S. Rosenthal Chair of Jewish Studies, published Narrating Rape: Shifting Perspectives in Biblical Literature and Popular Culture by SCM Press.
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