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Signe Cohen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia whose research interests center on Hinduism and South Asian Buddhism. Trained as a Sanskritist, she works with original Hindu and Buddhist texts, both in Sanskrit and in other ancient Asian languages, such as Pali, Prakrits, Tibetan, and Tocharian. Though much of her work has focused on the classical Upaniṣads, a genre of Hindu philosophical and religious texts from around the 8th century BCE onwards, her secondary area of research concerns the nexus of ancient texts and modern pop culture. In addition to numerous scholarly articles, she is the author of two books, Textual Criticism and Sacred Texts: A Comparative Method and I, Yantra: Exploring Self and Selflessness in Ancient Indian Robot Tales. Rabia Gregory is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her primary research interest is the history of Christianity in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, the study of which she approaches through book history, material culture, and theories of gender. Her first book, Marrying Jesus in Medieval and Early Modern Northern Europe: Popular Culture and Religious Reform, uses previously unpublished cultural artifacts to revise longstanding assumptions about religion, gender, and popular culture. She has also published on the relationship between religion, new media, and medieval culture in contemporary video games. She is currently preparing a critical introduction, biography, and facing-page edition and translation of the poetry of Anna Bijns (1493-1575).
“This is an important volume that emerges from an exemplary scholarly collaboration…it will both fill a lacuna in scholarship and advance important new directions in the study of religion, race, and health in the U.S.” —Rachel McBride Lindsey, Saint Louis University, author of A Communion of Shadows: Religion and Photography in Nineteenth-Century America “Confluences presents a beautiful flowing together of essays about religion, race, health, and region centered on Missouri but relevant to anyone who wants to understand the human condition.”—Candy Gunther Brown, Indiana University, author of Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion? “This groundbreaking collection transcends disciplines and easy definitions of what it means to belong and believe, to live health lives and overcome disease. Its strength is its range and diversity, both in the topics it covers and the scholars it brings into conversation. Just as Missouri is a place of confluence, where rivers, cultures, and religions meet, so too this volume brings together scholars from the humanities and sciences to explore the often overlooked in this place of boundaries and connections.” —John Wigger, University of Missouri, author of American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists and PTL: The Rise and Fallof Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire “Confluences: Religion, Health, and Diversity in Missouri centers the story of American religion and health in the places and peoples of Missouri. In the telling of these authors, Missouri becomes a site of constant movement; here, as the waters move and converge, so do people and religions from around the world. Confluences thus provides a robust history of Missouri’s religious and racial diversity and developments in health, as well as their contentious histories, which continue to shape the landscape of our present. Through provocative case studies, the contributors’ chapters challenge us to consider religion’s role at the intersection of individual and public health, from epidemic responses to genetic testing. The case studies likewise introduce us to new ways of interpreting religion and diversity in our historical memory, forefronting different practices of storytelling, preservation, collection, and celebration. Together, the book’s chapters describe a Missouri that is both vibrant and flawed, broken and mended, remarkable and unfinished. And in so doing it offers multiple new avenues for conversation and research.” —Philippa Koch, Missouri State University, author of The Course of God’s Providence: Religion, Health, and the Body in Early America “This is a fresh approach to public scholarship, providing an accessible resource for a wide range of readers. The editors convened an online conference during the COVID-19 pandemic. Career healthcare and university library professionals, faith-based community organization leaders, students and professors gathered to discuss religion and health issues in Missouri’s history, past and present. Selected papers from that event plus new contributions comprise this “collaborative public-facing effort,” as the editors describe it. The book will be of interest to general readers, professionals in a variety of fields, and academics across the humanities, providing an important model for the future.”—Michael J. Zogry, University of Kansas, author of Anetso, the Cherokee Ball Game: At the Center of Ceremony and Identity
