Meet the Faculty

Kevin Lewis O'Neill

• Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies
• Assistant Professor, American Studies Program
  

Education

• Ph.D. Stanford University, 2007

Contact Information

Background

• Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (Declined)
• Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
• Bernard J. Siegel Award for Outstanding Writing in Cultural Anthropology, Stanford University

  I received my PhD. in social and cultural anthropology from Stanford University and my masters’ degree in theological studies from Harvard University.  At its most basic, my research centers on the anthropological and theological themes of responsibility and belonging – both their social construction and emotional texture at everyday levels of knowledge.  They are themes that I approach transnationally through the ethnographic study of Christianity in and beyond Central America. 

  My first book, titled City of God: Christian Citizenship in Postwar Guatemala City, is in production with the University of California Press and is expected in the fall of 2009.  Based on two years of fieldwork, City of God details ethnographically neo-Pentecostalism’s growing influence on Guatemala’s postwar efforts at democratization. It is an ethnography of a multinational mega-church in postwar Guatemala City and of the faithful who struggle to understand what it means to be a ‘Christian citizen’ in an ethnically diverse, class-divided, and desperately violent capital city.

  My second book, Two Ways Out: A Study of Death and Life, is in preparation.  The book documents the growing world of Mara Salvatrucha, or the transnational gang circuit known as MS-13, from the perspective of gang ministry.  Amidst a growing concern for why young men and women so readily allow themselves to be ritualistically “beaten into” and “sexed into” the ranks of MS-13, nothing has yet been made of the two ways that men and women can leave this gang – a group to which they have otherwise pledged their lives.  The first is death.  The second is conversion.  Now courted by state officials in Guatemala and El Salvador to augment their own feeble attempts at security and governance, Charismatic and Pentecostal ministers work the streets as well as the confessional to open the hearts of MS-13 members to the saving grace of Jesus Christ. 

  At the same time, I am completing a series of articles on the politics of Christian eroticism in Latin America, the pornography of torture, and the practice of hope within contemporary social movements.  Linking these disparate endeavors is an interest in the role religions play in the public sphere, particularly in moments of abruption.  Violence and affect, erotics and politics: these topics organize my research into the shifting ground of religious practice and the anthropology of the Americas.

Research Interests

• Latin America
• Neo-Pentecostal Christianity
• Cities and Citizenship
• Genocide and Violence
• Gender and Masculinities
• Neoliberalism

Courses Recently Taught

• Christianity and Democracy in the Americas
• Religion and Violence in Latin America

Publication Highlights

Books

City of God: Christian Citizenship in Postwar Guatemala City.  University of California Press, Anthropology of Christianity Book Series, expected fall 2009.

Two Ways Out: A Study of Death and Salvation in the World of Mara Salvatrucha.  In preparation.

Edited Volumes

Truth/Memory/Representation and Genocide: Anthropological Approaches.  Duke University Press.  Expected February 2009.  Co-edited with Alex Hinton.

Securing the City: Neoliberalism, Space and Insecurity in Postwar Guatemala.  Under review at Duke University Press.  Co-edited with Kedron Thomas.

Selected Articles

“Who is a Christian?: Further Notes Towards an Anthropology of Christianity.”  Anthropological Theory, 8(4) (2008): 381-398.  Co-authored with William Garriott.

“Facing Risk: Levinas, Ethnography, and Ethics.”  Anthropology of Consciousness, 18(2) (2007): 29-55. Co-authored with Peter Benson

“Armed Citizens and the Stories They Tell: The National Rifle Association, Masculinity, and Rhetoric.”  Journal of Men and Masculinities, 9(4) (2007): 457-475.

“Writing Guatemala’s Genocide: Christianity and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.”  Journal for Genocide Research, 7(3) (2005): 310-331.