It has been an extraordinarily busy month: two weeks ago I submitted the final revisions to Postsecular History to the publisher, submitted my dissertation “Ontologies of Violence” to my committee for defense in early May, and submitted the corrected proofs for my guest-edited special issue of Political Theology on Mennonite Political Theology, which is a key part of my Mennonite Studies project (for a brief preview of the special issue see here and for a longer summary see here).
Looking ahead, past my defense, in Spring term I will be teaching an introductory course on Religious Studies at McMaster University, and in July and August I will be taking some time off.
This coming Fall I am excited to begin a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Supervised by Dr. Pamela Klassen, my project is called “Critique of Conspiracism” and in it I will extend my work on ontologies of violence and the politics of time by examining how conspiracism can be a violent way of thinking and how conspiracism uses and abuses history to serve present aims. I will also be teaching a course called “Conspiracy Theories & Religion” in the University of Waterloo Arts First program (I’ll be sure to post the syllabus here for those who are interested!), and presenting a prologue to the project called “Violence, Religion, and Conspiratorial Thinking” at the American Academy of Religion meetings in November 2021.
Dr. Maxwell Kennel 