Dr. Andrea McComb Sanchez (Ph.D. in Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) specializes in Native American religious traditions, religion in the Southwest, religion and colonialism in the U.S., and religion and the environment. She is a member of the American Indian Studies Graduate Interdisciplinary Program and an affiliate of the Institute of the Environment. Dr. McComb Sanchez’s current book project (under contract with the University of Nebraska Press), Of Corn and Catholicism: A History of Religion and Power in Pueblo Indian Patron Saint Feast Days, focuses on the imposition, adaptation, and eventual appropriation of Catholicism by Pueblo Indians through their development of the Patron Saint Feast Days, and analyzes how these Feast Days are both a relaxation and a maintenance of boundaries between Catholicism and older Pueblo traditions and ceremonies. Dr. McComb Sanchez teaches courses on Native American religious traditions, religion and culture in the Southwest, religion and ecology, and theory and method in religious studies.
McComb Sanchez, Andrea
Assistant Professor
Native American Religious Traditions, Religion in the Southwest, and Religion and the Environment
An introduction to the religious history and contemporary religious diversity of the region currently known as the American Southwest, focusing on a variety of topics such as land based spirituality, shrines, pilgrimage, folk saints, religious syncretism, and New Age movements. The religious landscape of this area includes the traditions of indigenous communities, Spanish colonial descendants, Mexican Americans, Anglos, and immigrants from around the globe.
Examines the positive (curing, harmony with the natural world, etc.) aspects of Indian religions. Indian medicine men may participate in the course at various junctures.