Education:
Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara (Religious Studies), dissertation titled: “Traces of the Spirit: The Religious Dimensions of Popular Music,” 1998
M.A., University of California, Santa Barbara (Religious Studies), 1993
B.A., Fairhaven College, Western Washington University (Interdisciplinary Concentration: The Poetics of Cultural Change), 1982
Teaching, Professional, and Research Experience:
2002 – Present
Founder and Director of The Sacred Center, a nonprofit educational organization in the San Francisco Bay Area offering programs in cross-cultural religious and spiritual studies, and the sacred arts.
2009
Presented lecture, “Trance Formation: Music, Trance, Religious Experience and the Human Brain,” at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. for their series on Music and the Brain.
2006 – 2009
Co-Principal Investigator of a major study and research project entitled “Music, Spirituality, Religion, and the Human Brain,” a grant funded by the Templeton Advanced Research Program of the Metanexus Institute. In collaboration with Co-PI, Dr. Petr Janata of the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California Davis, this project investigated the dynamics and brain science of how music induces religious/spiritual experience in six test groups (two western religions, two non-western religions, and two non-religious but spiritually oriented music scenes).
2005
Created and taught “Trance Formation: Ritual, Rhythm, and Ecstatic Dance” for the Lifelong Learning Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, California.
1999 — 2002
Assistant Professorship in the Religious Studies Department at the College of Wooster in Ohio. Created and taught “Religions East and West.” Developed a curricular area in Religion and the Arts, including creating and teaching classes in “Religion and the Literary Imagination,” “Religious Dimensions of Popular Culture,” “Religion, the Arts, and Creative Expression,” “Religion and Music,” “Religion and Film,” and “The Spiritual Path in Contemporary Culture.”
2000
Research and fieldwork in electronic dance music cultures in England and Germany.
1996 – 1998
Dissertation research and fieldwork in popular musics in Berkeley, California and the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
1995
Fieldwork in Senegalese and Malian traditional and popular musics in Dakar, Senegal and Bamako, Mali. Fieldwork in Ga possession religion in Accra, Ghana and outlying villages.
1987 — 1990
Founder and Director, The Fairhaven Mysteries Project, a nonprofit educational workshop and retreat center in Bellingham, Washington offering programs in cross-cultural religious and spiritual studies, and
the sacred arts.
1983 — 1987
Program Director, The Ojai Foundation, a nonprofit educational workshop and retreat center in Ojai, California offering programs in cross-cultural religious and spiritual studies, and the sacred arts.
Publications:
Trance Formation: The Spiritual and Religious Dimensions of Global Rave Culture. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Traces of the Spirit: The Religious Dimensions of Popular Music. New York: New York University Press, 2002.
“Rap Music, Hip Hop Culture, and ‘The Future Religion of the World,'” in God In The Details: American Religion in Popular Culture, ed. by Kate McCarthy and Eric Michael Mazur. New York: Routledge, 2001.
