J. Brent Crosson
Assistant Professor — Ph.D., UC Santa Cruz
Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies

Contact
- E-mail: brent.crosson@utexas.edu
- Office: BUR 514
Interests
Anthropology of religion and secularity, anthropology of science, Caribbean and Latin American studies, African diasporas, South Asian diasporas, Atlantic modernities, anthropology of/and race, anthropology of energy, colonial regulation of religion
Biography
Brent Crosson is an anthropologist of religion and secularism who works in the Caribbean. His research has focused on contestations over the limits of legal power, science, and religion in the Americas. Prior to joining the faculty at UT Austin, he was an ACLS/Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellow at UC Santa Cruz and a Ruth Landes Memorial postdoctoral fellow in cultural anthropology at NYU. His first book--Experiments with Power: Obeah and the Remaking of Religion--is published with University of Chicago Press (2020). His research on Caribbean practices of healing and legal intervention--known as obeah, spiritual work, or science--has been published in a number of journals, including Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Ethnos, The Journal of Africana Religions, Cosmologics, and Cultural Anthropology's Fieldnotes. His special issue in the journal Ethnos--"What Possessed You?"--explores the relationship between spirit possession, material possessions, and conceptions of self. His work on race relations and solidarity has appeared in Anthropological Quarterly and the Duke University Press journal Small Axe. His current research focuses on climate change, religion, and conceptions of energy, with chapters on these issues forthcoming in the edited volumes Mediality on Trial (De Gruyter Press), Climate Politics and the Power of Religion (Indiana Univ. Press), and Critical Approaches to Science and Religion (Cambridge Univ. Press).
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo50271449.html
Courses
AFR 345G • Religions Of The Caribbean-Wb
31130 • Spring 2021
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM
Internet; Synchronous
ANT 391 • Nonhuman Agency-Wb
31255 • Fall 2020
Meets TH 3:00PM-6:00PM
Internet; Synchronous
(also listed as LAS 391, R S 383C)
R S 373L • Science/Magic/Religion-Wb
41965 • Fall 2020
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM
Internet; Synchronous
EGC
AFR 317E • Intro Relig/Lat Amer/Carib
30522 • Spring 2020
Meets MWF 1:00PM-2:00PM BUR 130
GC
(also listed as LAS 310, R S 316K)
AFR 372G • Science/Magic/Religion
30675 • Spring 2020
Meets MW 2:30PM-4:00PM BUR 130
EGC
(also listed as AMS 327, R S 373L)
ANT 391 • Violence/Sovereignty
31290 • Fall 2019
Meets W 3:00PM-6:00PM CMA 3.134
(also listed as AFR 385, LAS 391)
ANT 324C • Science/Magic/Religion
31625 • Spring 2019
Meets TTH 3:30PM-5:00PM UTC 1.130
EGC
(also listed as AFR 372G, AMS 327, R S 373L)
R S 375S • Religions Of No Religion
43040 • Spring 2019
Meets TTH 5:00PM-6:30PM CAL 419
IIWr
ANT 324L • Religions Of The Caribbean
31722 • Fall 2018
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM WAG 112
GC
(also listed as AFR 372G, LAS 324L, R S 366)
ANT 391 • Non-Human Agency
31880 • Fall 2018
Meets M 3:00PM-6:00PM BUR 554
(also listed as LAS 391, R S 383C)
AFR 372G • Science/Magic/Religion
29805 • Spring 2018
Meets TTH 3:30PM-5:00PM CLA 0.112
EGC
(also listed as AMS 327, R S 373L)
ANT 324L • Anthropology Of Religion
30760 • Spring 2018
Meets TTH 5:00PM-6:30PM CLA 0.122
GC
(also listed as LAS 324L, R S 373)
ANT 391 • Violence/Sovereignty/Relig
31628 • Fall 2017
Meets W 2:00PM-5:00PM BUR 554
(also listed as AFR 385, LAS 391, R S 383C)
R S 375S • Religions Of No Religion
43710 • Fall 2017
Meets TTH 3:30PM-5:00PM PAR 210
IIWr
ANT 324L • Science/Magic/Religion
31275 • Spring 2017
Meets MW 2:30PM-4:00PM WEL 2.312
EGC
(also listed as AFR 372G, AMS 327, R S 373)
ANT 324L • Religions Of The Caribbean
30370 • Spring 2016
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM SZB 296
GC
(also listed as AFR 372G, LAS 324L, R S 366)
ANT 391 • Non-Human Agency
30570 • Spring 2016
Meets TH 3:30PM-6:30PM BUR 128
(also listed as R S 383C)
ANT 324L • Science, Magic, & Religion
30537 • Fall 2015
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SAC 4.118
(also listed as R S 373)
Publications
PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
- Crosson, J. Brent (2020). Experiments with Power: Obeah and the Remaking of Religion in Trinidad. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 115,000 words. (Publication date of June 2020 in the University of Chicago Book Series Class 200: New Studies in Religion, edited by Kathryn Lofton and John Lardas Modern).
EDITED PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUES
- Crosson, J. Brent (Ed.). (2019). Special Issue: What Possessed You? Spirits, Property, and Political Sovereignty at the Limits of “Possession.” Ethnos 84(4). 121 pp.
PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES
- Crosson, J. Brent. (2020). “Don’t Study People”: The Ethics of Studying Others in Trinidad and in Anthropology. Anthropological Quarterly 93(1), 1093-1124.
- Crosson, J. Brent. (2019). Introduction: What Possessed You? Spirits, Property, and Political Sovereignty at the Limits of “Possession.” Ethnos 84(4), 546-556.
- Crosson, J. Brent. (2019). Catching Power: Problems with Possession, Sovereignty, and African Religions in Trinidad. Ethnos 84(4), 588-614.
- Crosson, J. Brent. (2017). The Impossibility of Liberal Secularism: Religious (In)tolerance, Spirituality, and Not-Religion. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 30(1), 37-55.
- Crosson, J. Brent. (2015). What Obeah Does Do: Healing, Harming, and the Boundaries of Religion. The Journal of Africana Religions 3(2), 151-176.
- Crosson, J. Brent. (2014). Own People: Race, Altered Solidarities, and the Limits of Culture in Trinidad. Small Axe 45, 18-34.
- Winner, The Question of the Social Sciences: A Small Axe Essay Competition, Duke University Press, 2012-13.
- Barret, Anna, J. Brent Crosson, Gregory P. Crucian, & Kenneth Heilman. (2002). Far Bias on the Radial Line Bisection Task: Measuring Perceptual-Attentional and Motor-Intentional Bias in Normal Subjects. Cortex 38(5), 769-778.
- Barret, Anna, J. Brent Crosson, Gregory P. Crucian, & Kenneth Heilman. (2000). Horizontal Line Bisections in Upper and Lower Body Space. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society 6(4), 455-459.
PEER-REVIEWED BOOK CHAPTERS
- Crosson, J. Brent. (In Press). Burdens of Proof: Science, Obeah, and its Mediums in Trinidad. In Ehler Voss and Daniel C. Barber (Eds.), Mediality on Trial, 25 ms. pp. (10, 180 words). Berlin: De Gruyter.
- Crosson, J. Brent (In Press). “The Earth is the Lord” or “God is a Trini?”: The Political Theology of Climate Change, Environmental Stewardship, and Petroleum Extraction. In Evan Berry and David Haberman (Eds.), Climate Politics and the Power of Religion, 30 ms. pp. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Crosson, J. Brent (Accepted, 2019). Between Possessor and Possessed. In Diana Espírito Santo and Matan Shapiro (Eds.), Conceiving the Cosmos: Warping a Novel Anthropology of Spirit Possession. 43 ms. pp. Durham NC: Duke University Press.
- Crosson, J. Brent (Accepted, 2019). Obeah Simplified? Occult Scientism and the Afflictions of Science in the Esoteric Atlantic. Invited Submission for Critical Approaches to Science and Religion, edited by Terence Keel, Ahmed Ragab, and Myrna Perez Sheldon. 40 ms. pp. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
REFERENCE ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS
- Crosson, J. Brent. (2019). The Politics of Spirituality and Secularization in Western Modernity. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press. 12,460 words.
- Crosson, J. Brent. (Under Contract). Humanism and the Enlightenment. Oxford Handbook of Humanism, Anthony Pinn, ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
REVIEW ESSAYS
- Crosson, J. Brent (2019). Inventive Traditions: Authority and Power in African Diasporic Religions. Religious Studies Review 45(4), 451-459. 7,137 words.
- Crosson, J. Brent (2016). Cooking in Modernity’s Crucible: Global Locals, Native Creoles, and the Politics of Culinary Mixture. Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 26(2), 94-96.
INTERNET PUBLICATIONS
- Crosson, J. Brent. (July 19, 2016). Oil, Obeah, and Science. Cosmologics: A Magazine of Science, Religion, and Culture, 11 pp. Available online, http://cosmologicsmagazine.com/issues/summer2016.
- Crosson, J. Brent. (June 20, 2013). Invisibilities: Translation. Spirits of the Dead and the Politics of Invisibility. Cultural Anthropology Online, 2 pp. Available online, http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/346-invisibilitiestranslation-spirits-of-the-dead-and-the-politics-ofinvisibility.
BOOK REVIEWS
- Crosson, J. Brent (2018). Review of Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic, Akinwumi Ogundiran and Paula Saunders, eds. Journal of Ritual Studies 32(2).
- Crosson, J. Brent (2018). Review of Spiritual Citizenship: Transnational Pathways from Black Power to Ifá in Trinidad, Fadeke Castor. AAR’s Reading Religion. http://readingreligion.org/books/spiritual-citizenship
MEDIA INTERVIEWS
“The National Debate on Legalizing Obeah.” Observer Radio, 91.1 FM, Antigua and Barbuda, November 2015.
“San Antonio Animal Sacrifice was Santería Practice, but was it Illegal?,” Elaine Ayala, San Antonio Express News, 23 March 2018.