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.
This course critically explores the categories of "religion," "spirituality," and "the sacred" as they relate to American Indian communities, traditions, lifeways, histories, narratives, ceremony, and land. Focusing on both the plurality of indigenous lifeways and shared characteristics, some major topics that will be examined include the role of religion both in the colonization of Native people as well as in resistance to colonization, the importance of land/place/ecosystem and conceptions of sacred space, and issues of religious freedom and the fight for traditional land. Throughout we will analyze the efficacy of the terms "religion" and "spirituality" as well as engage with concerns regarding the academic study of Native American religions more broadly.
This course critically explores the categories of "religion," "spirituality," and "the sacred" as they relate to American Indian communities, traditions, lifeways, histories, narratives, ceremony, and land. Focusing on both the plurality of indigenous lifeways and shared characteristics, some major topics that will be examined include the role of religion both in the colonization of Native people as well as in resistance to colonization, the importance of land/place/ecosystem and conceptions of sacred space, and issues of religious freedom and the fight for traditional land. Throughout we will analyze the efficacy of the terms "religion" and "spirituality" as well as engage with concerns regarding the academic study of Native American religions more broadly.