Education
Ph.D., Princeton University
M.A., Claremont Graduate University
B.A., Eastern Mennonite University
Biography
Tisa Wenger teaches and writes on the intersections of religion, race, and empire in U.S. history. Her scholarship attends particularly to the historical construction of “religion” in the United States, the cultural politics of religious freedom, and the problematics of religion for Native Americans as colonized nations. Her newest book Spirits of Empire: How Settler Colonialism Made American Religion (2026) was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Wenger’s other publications include We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (2009) and Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal (2017). With Sylvester Johnson, she co-edited Religion and U.S. Empire: Critical New Histories (2022). Wenger also served as guest editor for a special issue of Pacific Historical Review titled “Religion in the Nineteenth-Century American West” (Summer 2023).
Wenger co-edits the journal Method and Theory in the Study of Religion and the University of Kansas book series Studies in US Religion, Politics, and Law. At Yale she holds a primary appointment in the Divinity School and secondary appointments in American Studies, History, and Religious Studies, where she serves as ADGS for the doctoral program in American Religious History. More information on Wenger’s research and teaching is available at https://www.tisawenger.net/, and you can make an appointment to meet with Professor here.
Books
- We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (University of North Carolina Press, 2009)
- Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal (University of North Carolina Press, 2017)
- Religion and U.S. Empire: Critical New Histories, co-edited with Sylvester Johnson (New York University Press, 2022)
- Spirits of Empire: How Settler Colonialism Made American Religion (forthcoming, 2026)
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