Author Bios

Author Bios

Mehnaz Afridi is a professor of religious studies at Manhattan College and director of the Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center. Dr. Afridi earned her Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of South Africa. Her research focuses primarily on Islam and contemporary literature, the intersection of Judaism and Islam, the Holocaust and the role of Muslims, antisemitism and Islamophobia. Her recent book Shoah through Muslim Eyes (Academic Studies Press, 2017) was nominated for the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research and the Jacob Schnitzer Book Award.

Philip P. Arnold is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion at Syracuse University. As well as a core faculty member of Native American and Indigenous Studies. His upcoming book is titled Urgency of Indigenous Religions (University of New Mexico Press, forthcoming) He has also written Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics: Planting a Tree (2001) and The Gift of Sports: Indigenous Ceremonial Dimensions of the Games We Love (2012). Philip P. Arnold is the president of the Indigenous Values Initiative, a non-profit organization that works to support organizations and initiatives that educate the general public about the indigenous values of the Haudenosaunee; the People of the long house.

Fraser Macdonald is an anthropologist of religion and a senior lecturer at the University of Waikato. His research focuses upon global evangelical-Pentecostal Christian movements in Melanesia, among the Oksapmin people. With emphasis on how different aspects of their traditional religion and cosmology have been reshaped and revalued through coming into contact with globalized forms of Christianity.

Rode Molla is Assistant Professor, Berryman Family Chair in Children’s Spirituality and Nature at Virginia Theological Seminary. Dr. Molla recently earned her Ph.D. in Religion at Iliff and the University of Denver. Rode’s research employs an interdisciplinary approach at the intersection of lived religion, post-colonial studies, and feminist pastoral and practical theological methods. Her dissertation resists neoliberal governmentality through political and religious analysis, theological reflexivity of care, and holistic educational praxis in order to restore in-between political spaces and in-between subjectivities.

Victor E. Taylor is the Vice Provost for Graduate and Extended Studies at South Dakota State University in Brookings, SD. He is the editor of a new interdisciplinary book series with Parlor Press, Emerging Conversations in the Global Humanities, (2022.) Dr. Taylor was the inaugural director/senior academic officer of the division of graduate studies and professional programs at York College of Pennsylvania and former chair of the English and humanities department.

Sheila S. Walker is a cultural anthropologist, filmmaker, and the executive director of Afrodiaspora, Inc., a nonprofit organization based in Washington D.C., that is developing a documentary series and educational materials about the global African Diaspora. Dr. Walker served as director of the Center for African and African American Studies, and was the Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor in the College of Liberal Arts, and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas Austin.

Mark Wood is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of World Studies. Dr. Woods research focuses on the intersection of religion, ethics, social justice, and sustainability. His publications include articles and book chapters on Christianity, Buddhism, post-religious ethics, and political thought, as well as his book, Cornel West and the Politics of Prophetic Pragmatism (University of Illinois Press, 2000) Professor Wood is a leader in the development of pedagogy that combines classroom study with engagement in local and global efforts to build a healthier world.