M. Gail Hamner
M. Gail Hamner
Professor
CONTACT
Religion
512 Hall of Languages
Email: mghamner@syr.edu
Office: 315.443.5716
A&S AFFILIATIONS
Women's and Gender Studies
Degrees
- Ph.D., Religion, Duke University, Durham, NC, 1997
- M.T.S., Philosophical Theology, valedictorian, Boston University School of Theology, Boston, MA, 1989
- B.S., Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC, 1985
Social/Academic Links
Courses Taught
- REL 246 Religion and Popular Culture
- REL 291 Comparative Themes and Issues
- REL 326 Religion and Film
- REL 353 Religion and Nature
- REL 358 Critical Issues in Religious Thought
- REL 391 Advanced Religion Seminar
- REL 500 Confessions
- REL 644 Feminist Theology
- REL 661 Self, Body, Transcendence
- REL 662 Marx and Foucault
- REL 663 Religion and Revolution
Professor Hamner specializes in religion and culture and teaches at the intersections of continental philosophy, feminist and gender theories, and media/film theory. She is the author of American Pragmatism: A Religious Genealogy (Oxford: 2002) and Religion and Film: The Politics of Nostalgia (Palgrave: 2012) and is currently working on a manuscript that rethinks the public sphere and the place of religion within the public sphere in light of our intensely hyperlinked and socially mediated world.
- 2013 Full Professor, Department of Religion, Syracuse University
- 2008 Associated faculty for the Women and Gender Studies Program, Syracuse University.
- 2005-present Associate Professor, Department of Religion, Syrause University.
- 1998-2005 Assistant Professor, Department of Religion, Syracuse University.
- 1997-1998 Lecturer, Duke University, Religion Department.
- Response to Sara Ahmed's Living a Feminist Life, in Syndicate. (Jan-Feb 2018).
- Working on a chapter on "Scorsese as a critic of modernity" for a volume on Scorsese edited by Chris Barnett of Villanova.
- "Matters of Place: Placing Religion in Film", Material Religions: Exploring the material basis of religious traditions, 7/24/2017"
- Askesis and the Logic of the Spiral," Theology and Sexuality 22:3 (2017), 143-154. (Published online June 26, 2017)
- "Sensing Religion in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men," in Religions, December 2015.
- “Filming Reconciliation: Affect and Nostalgia in The Tree of Life,” in The Journal of Religion and Film, spring 2014.
- “Work and Life in the Balance,” short ‘round-table’ contribution to Religious Studies News, spring 2015.
- “Acting in Common: How the Flesh of Multitude can become Incarnate Words against Empire”, in Evangelicals and Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo, ed. B.E. Benson and P. Heltzel (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2008), pp. 43-53.
- “What is an Act?: Reflexive Action in Pragmatism and Praxis Philosophy,” PoLAR: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review, November, 2003.
- “The Work of Love”, in Opting for the Margins: Postmodernity and Liberation in Christian Theology, ed. Joerg Rieger, Oxford University Press, 2003.
- "Cultural Saints", in Luis León and Gary Laderman, eds., Religion and American Culture (Santa Barbara : ABC-CLIO, 2014).
- 2017
- Sept Workshop/conference, "Conflicted Bodies: Feminist and Queer Responses to Militarism and Violence" at Goldsmiths College in London on 9/30.
- Nov "The Filmic Institution of Place in Moonlight" at the Merleau-Ponty Circle, "The Significance of Place" in Albuquerque on 11/3.
- 2016
- Nov “Genealogy of Affect and Technologies of Mediation” for Got Genealogy session of the Cultural History and the Study of Religion Group, AAR San Antonio, November.
- 2015
- Feb “Affect Theory as a Tool for Examining Religion Documentaries.” John Corrigan’s AAR Grant Symposium on Religion and Affect. National Humanities Center, Research Triangle, NC.
- Oct “Justice and Forgiveness, Wombs and Strangers: A Response to Claire Katz” Psychology and the Other Conference, Cambridge, MA
- Oct “Affect and Religion Documentaries”. Worldings/Tensions/Futures, Affect Theory Conference. Lancaster PA.
- Nov “Eros and Ascesis: A Response to Lynne Huffer.” American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, GA (Social Theory and Religion Group)
- Nov “Secularity, Sacrifice, Impasse”. American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, GA (Philosophy of Religion Section)
- 2014
- Apr “Mask and Materiality in Sembene’s Black Girl”, International Conference on Religion and Film, Omaha Nebraska, April 10-12.
- Interviewed by Kristian Petersen for his New Books in Religion podcast on my book Imaging Religion in Film
- Sept “Light as Eternity: The Temporal Dynamics of No Country for Old Men”, International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture, Leuven Belgium, Sept 18-20.
- Nov The American Academy of Religion, National Meeting, San Diego, CA
- “Mediated Affect”, for the Religion and Media Workshop, Nov. 21
- “Foucault, Affect, and Social Power”, for the Critical Theories and Discourses on Religion Group, Nov. 22
- Apr “Mask and Materiality in Sembene’s Black Girl”, International Conference on Religion and Film, Omaha Nebraska, April 10-12.
- 2013
- Apr Invited public lecture on Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men at Haverford College
- Nov The American Academy of Religion, National Meeting, Baltimore, MD
- “Religion as anti-consumerism in the Coens’ The Man Who Wasn’t There” for the Religion, Film and Visual Culture Group
- “Affect and Religion,” for the Theology and Religious Reflection Group