Dr. Johanna Richlin
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Ph.D. Stanford University, 2016
M.A. Stanford University, 2012
M.T.S. Harvard Divinity School, 2010
B.A. Wesleyan University, 2008
Richlin CV
Professional Interests:
Research Interests
Prayer, ritual and healing; Affect, emotion and subjectivity; U.S. religion and society; Migrant experience; Healthcare encounters, perceptions and beliefs; U.S. and Brazil.
Dr. Richlin specializes in the anthropology of religion and psychological and medical anthropology, with expertise in evangelical Christianity in the U.S. and Brazil, U.S. migration, studies of affect and emotion, and gender, health and society.
Her first research project explored the impact of U.S. migration experience on the varied religious beliefs, choices, and sentiments of Brazilian migrants in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region. From this body of research, she published a research article in Current Anthropology, entitled “The Affective Therapeutics of Migrant Faith: Evangelical Christianity among Brazilians in Greater Washington, D.C” (2019), and completed her first book, In the Hands of God: How Evangelical Belonging Transforms Migrant Experience In the United States (Princeton University Press, 2022). Richlin’s research was reviewed in The Economist (“Religion and Vulnerability: Why Charismatic Christianity is Popular with Migrants” (2019)) and featured on The Chris Voss Show (2022).
Richlin’s current research investigates U.S. healthcare experience and vaccine beliefs, behaviors, and solidarities among diverse demographics. The first publication related to this project, “From Iatrogenesis to Vaccine Skepticism: U.S. Mothers’ Negative Vaccine Perceptions and Non-vaccination Practices as Reverberations of Medical Harm,” is due out in Spring 2023 in Medical Anthropology Quarterly.
Publications:
In the Hands of God: How Evangelical Belonging Transforms Migrant Experience in the U.S. (Princeton University Press, 2022).
Media: Interviewed by Chris Voss on “The Chris Voss Show,” June 7, 2022, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chris-voss-show-podcast-in-the-hands-of/id343172752?i=1000565533049
“Immigration Influx: The Remaking of Contemporary Christianity,” [6,000 words] The Handbook for Contemporary Christianity, Mark Lamport, ed. (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022).
“The ‘Affective Therapeutics’ of Migrant Faith: Evangelical Christianity among Brazilians in Greater Washington, D.C.,” Current Anthropology 60:3 (2019): 369-390. [13,000 words, published as a “research forum” alongside responses from 5 leading scholars and my 2,000-word reply].
Media: Bruce Clark, “Why Charismatic Christianity is popular with migrants,” The Economist, August 3, 2019, https://www.economist.com/erasmus/2019/08/03/why-charismatic-christianity-is-popular-with-migrants.
Contact:
Telephone: 207.581.1809
Fax: 207.581.1823
Email: johanna.richlin@maine.edu
Department of Anthropology
University of Maine
5773 Stevens Hall So., Rm. 230
Orono, Maine 04469-5773