Emma Anderson
Associate Professor, Department of Classics and Religious Studies
Member of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and thereby authorized to supervise theses.
Office: ARTS 023
Telephone: 613-562-5800, ext. 1176
E-mail: Emma.Anderson@uOttawa.ca
Emma Anderson joined the Department of Classics and Religious Studies after concluding her doctorate at Harvard University in 2005. While she teaches a wide range of graduate and undergraduate courses, her primary area of research focuses on colonial religious interactions between aboriginal peoples and European missionaries.
Her first book, entitled The Betrayal of Faith: The Tragic Journey of a Colonial Native Convert (Harvard University Press, 2007) documented the fascinating and poignant true story of Pierre-Anthoine Pastedechouan, a 17th century Innu man who, as a child, spent five years in a French monastery before being sent home as a missionary to his people. Suspended between two worlds, Pastedechouan was alienated from both his native community and his missionary mentors, with – ultimately – tragic results. The book received the Best First Book in the History of Religions prize from the American Academy of Religion, and the Alf Heggoy Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society. Laval University Press published a French translation of the work, entitled La Trahison de la Foi: le parcours tragique d’un converti autochtone à l’epoque coloniale in the fall of 2009. This work has recently been named as a finalist for the Prix du Canada en sciences sociales 2010-2011 by the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Anderson’s current research investigates the history of devotion to Canadian saint Jean de Brébeuf from his violent death in 1649 to the present day, exploring in particular its impact upon native peoples. She will be presenting this research to a European audience in Amsterdam in May, 2011.
University degrees
2005 - PhD, Harvard University
1998 - MA, Harvard Divinity School
1993 - BA, Carleton University
Fields of interest
- European-Aboriginal Religious Contact in Colonial Canada
- North American Religious History
- Aboriginal Religions
- Post-Tridentine French Catholicism
- Conversion and De-conversion
- Miracles, Healings, and Marian Apparitions
- Material Culture and Religion, Popular Religion
- Religion in Contemporary Canada
- Religion and Violence in colonial North America
Courses taught
- SRS1191 Religion, Culture, and Identity in Canada
- SRS1591 La religion, la culture, et l’identité au Canada
- SRS2386 Missionaries, Medicine Men, and Methodists: Selected Topics in the History of Religion in Canada
- SRS3110 Religion, Spirituality, and Culture in Contemporary Western Society
- SRS3139 Religious Encounters in the Colonial Americas
- SRS3140 Divine Images and Sacred Stories: Art, Religion, and Mythology
- SRS3141 Gender and Piety: Women and North American Christianity
- SRS4907 Dialogue, Imposition, and Resistance: Aboriginal-EuroCanadian Religious Interactions, 1600-Present
- SRS6907 (Winter ’06) Miracles, Healings and Apparitions: Interpreting Extraordinary Religious Phenomena (Fall ’07) Aboriginal Peoples and Christianity
- SRS6907 Selected Topics in Christianity: Understanding Christian Martyrdom
Selected publications
The Betrayal of Faith: The Tragic Journey of a Colonial Native Convert. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007.
La Trahison de la foi: le parcours tragique d’un converti autochtone à l’époque coloniale. Québec: Les Presses de L’Université Laval, 2009.
“Blood, Fire, and ‘Baptism’: Three Perspectives on the Death of Jean de Brébeuf, Seventeenth-Century Jesuit ‘Martyr,’” in Joel Martin and Mark Nicholas, eds., Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press (forthcoming, 2010).
“Re-envisioning Martyrdom: Mère Catherine de Saint-Augustine and the Feminization of Heroic Suffering in Colonial Québec” in Plane, Anne Marie and Tuttle, Leslie, Dreams and Visions in the Atlantic World, 1450-1830, University of Pennsylvania Press (forthcoming).
“Perceiving Presence: Marian Apparitions and Healings in Nineteenth-Century Europe,” in Sarah Coakley, ed., Spiritual Healing. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans (forthcoming).
« ‘Pleut à Dieu que je fusse mort en France.’ Le Destin Tragique de Pierre-Anthoine Pastedechouan, Autochtone du Canada en Anjou, » Archives d’Anjou, 2007.
« Les représentants naïfs: l’exhibition, le baptême, et l’éducation des ‘petites sauvages’ en France au dix-septième siècle, » in Hélène Cazes, ed.Histoires d’Enfants. Québec: Presses de L’Université Laval, 2008.
“Between Conversion and Apostasy: The Religious Journey of Pierre-Anthoine Pastedechouan,”Anthropologica 49 (2007): 17-34.
“Do Not Send Me Back to Those Beasts Who Do Not Know God’: The Religious and Cultural Transformation of an Innu Child in Seventeenth-Century France,” (Part I of a two-part series) ARC: The Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University 32 (2004): 73-96.
“My Misfortune is That I Have Not a Mind Strong Enough to Remain Firm in My Determination:” The Fatal Ambivalence of a Seventeenth-Century Aboriginal Convert,” (Part II of a two-part series) in ARC: The Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University 34 (2006): 107-130.
“‘They Should be Ashamed to Eat, Who are Reluctant to Work:’ The Jesuit Agriculturalist Ethic on the Frontiers of Eighteenth-Century New Spain,” in C. Pullapilly et al, eds. Christianity and Native Cultures: Perspectives from Different Regions of the World. Notre Dame, IN: Cross Cultural Press, 2004, p. 306-351.
“Fatal Ambivalence: The Religious Journey of Pierre-Anthoine Pastedechouan, Seventeenth-Century Montagnais Amerindian,” in C. Pullapilly et al, eds. Christianity and Native Cultures: Perspectives from Different Regions of the World. Notre Dame, IN: Cross Cultural Press, 2004, p. 352-383.
“Changing Devotional Paradigms and Their Impact upon Nineteenth-Century Marian Apparitions: The Case of La Salette,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 52 (1998): 85-122.
