lucia hulsether
assistant professor, department of religious studies
Lucia Hulsether is an ethnographer and historian of religion committed to a enacting
a democratic praxis in her teaching and her research. She works at the intersection
of critical race and ethnic studies, feminist and queer theory, and the study of labor
and capitalism.
Professor Hulsether—you can call her “Prof. H.” or just “LH” for short—approaches
her classes knowing that everyone in the room is both a teacher and a learner. No
matter what a person's familiarity with course content, everyone has experiences and
knowledges to contribute toward shared analysis and reflection.
Aware of power dynamics present in any classroom, Prof. H. grades using a model of
collaborative self-assessment and partners with CLTL student advisers to collect course
feedback. This approach is rooted in Prof. H’s experience as an organizer in race
and labor justice movements. She combines her interests in social movement organizing
and democratic education as the co-host of “Nothing Never Happens: A Radical Pedagogy
Podcast.” Find it on iTunes!
Her research is focused on the religious cultures of the Americas. She interprets
this topic broadly, to encompass ritual practices and collective forms through which
people organize their lives and articulate their values. Her first book, tentatively
titled Liberated Market: On the Cultural Politics of Capitalist Humanitarianism, is
about transnational “conscious capitalist” initiatives like fair trade, microfinance,
and corporate social responsibility. She is also pursuing projects on the intellectual
cultures of college policy debate competition and on the gendered history of U.S.
civic education programs.
Raised in the mountains of east Tennessee, Prof. H. has lived and studied in the northeast
for several years. This is her first semester at Skidmore, where she’ll primarily
teach courses on the religious cultures of the Americas and on intersectional approaches
to the study of religion. She is excited to learn and grow in this community, and
she looks forward to the connections she will make here.