Rebecca Sachs I am pleased to be able to update my rank from Associate Professor to Professor. The new rank takes effect in fall 2012.
Rebecca Sachs changed a position.
Rebecca Sachs I am very excited to have been invited to be the keynote speaker at the first annual Graduate Conference on Religion at Harvard Divinity School in October (2012). The conference theme is "Ways of Knowing." HDS will be celebrating "the year of the... more
Rebecca Sachs I am very excited to have been invited to be the keynote speaker at the first annual Graduate Conference on Religion at Harvard Divinity School in October (2012). The conference theme is "Ways of K... more
Faculty Member, Religious & Theological Studies
Professor
Merrimack College
About
Currently I am co-editing (with Richard Carp) the book series Studies in Body and Religion, published through Lexington books (Rowman Littlefield). We have also established a program unit on Body and Religion in the American Academy of Religion, which we co-chair. The volume I have been co-editing with David Cave on religion and the naturalized body (the body seen as a bounded, biochemical organism) is forthcoming in March 2012 with Brill. These current areas of research go back to my original interest in body and religion.
I have also done research on religious games and toys, resulting in a co-authored book (with Nikki Bado-Fralick), "Toying with God: The World of Religious Games and Dolls," Baylor University Press, 2010.
Other publications include:
“The Battle for the Toybox: Marketing and Fun in the Development of Children’s Religious Identities” in Children and Religion: A Methods Handbook, Susan Ridgely, ed., NYU Press, forthcoming, spring 2011.
“Sacred Games are Serious Fun” in Cultures Emerging: Anthropology for a New Millennium, Linda Jencson, ed., Kendall-Hunt Publishing, 2009.
“The Paradox of Healing Pain,” Religion, Mar 2009, Vol. 39 Iss.1, p22-33.
“Examining the Structure and Role of Emotion: Contributions of Neurobiology to the Study of Embodied Religious Experience,” Zygon: The Journal of Science and Religion, 40:1, March 2005.
“Converting to what? Embodied culture and the adoption of new beliefs,” in Anthropology of Religious Conversion, Rowman and Littlefield, 2003.
Short Bio:
Rebecca Sachs Norris received her Ph.D. from the University Professors at Boston University in Religious Studies and Anthropology; her work focused on embodiment, identity and culture. She is Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of Religious & Theological Studies at Merrimack College in North Andover, MA, and was formerly an Instructor of Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine as well. She and Richard Carp are currently co-editing the book series Studies in Body and Religion, published through Lexington books (Rowman Littlefield). She is also the co-author (with Dr. Nikki Bado-Fralick) of Toying with God: The World of Religious Games and Dolls (Baylor, 2010). Her published articles address topics such as neurobiology and emotion (Zygon, 2005); and pain, suffering and religion (Religion, 2009).
In 2000 Dr. Norris successfully organized an anthropology program unit within the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and served for three years on the steering committee and five years as co-chair. More recently, with Richard Carp she successfully established a program unit on Body and Religion in the AAR, which they co-chair. This unit had its inaugural sessions at the AAR annual meetings in Montreal in 2009. Dr. Norris is also the Regionally Elected Director of the New England-Maritimes region of the AAR; as the regional director she also served on the AAR’s national board for three years.
