Donovan Schaefer

Donovan Schaefer is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power (Duke UP, 2015) and the award-winning Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin (Duke UP, 2022). His current research considers the affects and politics of public material culture, especially Confederate commemoration.

Articles

Religion Dispatches

Of Monkeys and Men — 100 Years since the Scopes Trial and Still Missing the Bigger Picture on Science v. Religion

A century ago today, America fixed its attention on a Dayton courthouse. Tennessee was prosecuting John T. Scopes for violating a 1925 law forbidding public schools and universities to teach the…

Donovan Schaefer

July 10, 2025

Article

Religion Dispatches

The Shared Fantasy of Redemptive Violence Between ISIS and the Islamophobic Right

What led Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel to rent a refrigerated truck, arm himself with a few pistols and fake assault rifles, and begin his terrible rampage last week on the beachside promenade of Nice…

Donovan Schaefer

July 18, 2016

Article

Religion Dispatches

Smelling the Sacred: Better (Lived) Religion Through Chemistry

An article published in the journal Scientific Reports this month provides evidence that Smell-O-Vision may never have gone away. The finding has implications for the study of human chemical signaling…

Donovan Schaefer

May 24, 2016

Article