About Me

English Bio

Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Kalamazoo College where she holds the Marlene Crandell Francis Chair in the Humanities. She is an ethnographer and historian of religion in the Americas and particularly specializes in Catholicism, materiality, and the body. Her research focuses on the cultural and embodied transmission of religion and how material culture and ritual practices do the work of creating religious identities, communities, and an enfleshed, bodily sense of religious belonging. Her areas of interest include ethnographic methods, urban religion, religion and masculinity, media and material culture, and Latinx religion. She is also committed to public scholarship and has published on tattoos and Catholic devotion, and a series of pieces on gentrification and urban development and its impact on religious communities.

Alyssa’s first book Lifeblood of the Parish: Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (NYU Press, 2020) is an ethnography about masculinity and men’s devotional lives in a gentrified neighborhood in New York City. Her second book project: Reinventing the Rosary: Innovation and Catholic Prayer reveals how the rosary has been reinvented, redesigned, and patented throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It tells the story of the many devotees, inventors, and marketers who remade the rosary as both a consumer object and media form that was technologically and spiritually advanced to fit into the lives of modern consumers. To support this research she was awarded the inaugural Visiting Scholar Fellowship at the University of Dayton’s Marian Library.

She is co-editor of Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, an international, leading journal in the field. Alyssa co-chairs the Men, Masculinities, and Religion Unit at the American Academy of Religion. She also serves on the Membership Committee of the American Catholic Historical Association and was a curator and editor for American Religion’s online publications. She was a Sacred Writes Public Scholarship Fellow in 2021, and held a media partnership with DigBoston in Religious Architecture and Sacred Space through 2022. She was also named one of the Young Scholars in American Religion, IUPUI’s Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture.

At Kalamazoo College, Alyssa teaches a wide and creative range of courses on religion and the Americas, that focus on gender, space, art and material culture, and contemporary religious life including: Religion and Masculinity in the US, Religions of Latin America, Catholics in the Americas, Urban Religion, Bad Religion, and Devotional Stuff. She received her BA in Religion and Sociology from Vassar College, and MA and PhD in Religion from Princeton University.

Biografia en Español

Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada es profesora en el Departamento de Religion en Kalamazoo College y cátedra de Humanidades Marlene Crandell Francis. Ella es etnógrafa e historiadora de religión en las Americas con una especialización en Catolicismo, cultura material, religión y el cuerpo, y métodos etnográficos. Su enfoque de investigación es la transmisión cultural y corporal de religión y como la cultura material y las practicas rituales crean identidades y comunidades religiosas, y un sentido corporal de pertenencia religiosa. Su areas de interés incluyen la religion urbana, masculinidades, medios y materialidad, y religión Latinx. En Kalamazoo College enseña una amplia y creativa gama de clases que enfocan en la vida religiosa contemporánea y cotidiana, el genero, espacio, y el arte y cultura material.

Tiene un doctorado en Religión de Princeton University y licenciatura en Religión y Sociología de Vassar College. Ella es editora de Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, una reconocida publicación académica internacional que publica investigación innovadora en las intersecciones de las areas de religión, antropología, y la historia del arte. También ella es cátedra del grupo de Hombres, Masculinidades, y Religión en la American Academy of Religion y también sirve en el comité de miembros en la American Catholic Historical Association. Alyssa se dedica a escribir para audiencias públicas, y ha escrito sobre gentrificación y su impacto en comunidades religiosas, y el rol de tatuajes y artistas del tatuaje en la vida devocional contemporánea.