Westar Institute

Mary Keller is a historian of religion who works at the intersection of feminist theory, postcolonial theory, and Indigenous studies. Her scholarship focusses on the relationship of religious lives to struggles for meaning and power. She teaches Introduction to World Religions, African Spirits in the New World, African American Religious Culture, Gilgamesh to the Bomb to Climate Change, and a field course on Heart Mountain. Dr. Keller emphasizes the geographical, historical, and social contexts in which religious lives are embedded and in which questions of personhood arise. Her current research examines the role of sacred land in a world of global capital, money, and agency, with particular attention on recent developments in theory and method in the study of spirit possession. She was a leader in Westar's Seminar on God and the Human Future (2015-2020), emphasizing the religious dimensions of climate change. Dr. Keller is a member of Westar's Academic Council.

Dr. Mary Keller is the Associate Professional Lecturer of Religious Studies and Adjunct Lecturer of African American and Diaspora Studies, University of Wyoming

2007 Semester at Sea, The University of Virginia

1997-2002 Lecturer, Women and Religion, University of Stirling, Scotland