Sarah M. Pike
Sarah M. Pike, Professor Emerita of Comparative Religion.
My training is in religion in America and my research and teaching blend ethnographic and historical methods and materials. In the past twenty years my research has focused on two areas: ritual studies and religion and ecology. During my 29 years of teaching at CSU, Chico I taught a wide range of courses, including, most recently, RELS 247, “Religion, Ethics, and Ecology,” RELS 332, “World Religions and Global Issues,” and RELS 323, “Religion and Nature.” My books include Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and The Search for Community (U. California Press, 2001), New Age and Neopagan Religions in America (Columbia U. Press, 2004), and For the Wild: Ritual and Commitment in Radical Eco-Activism (U. California Press, 2017). I also co-edited Reassembling Democracy: Ritual as Cultural Resource (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Ritual and Democracy: Protests, Publics and Performances (Equinox, 2020). I have written numerous articles and book chapters on contemporary Paganism, ritual, the New Age movement, the ancestral skills movement, Burning Man, spiritual dance, California wildfires, environmental activism, climate strikes, and youth culture. My current research focuses on ritual, spirituality, and ecology in several different contexts, including a book project on ritualized relationships with landscapes after wildfires. Among other things, this project highlights Indigenous/non-Indigenous groups’ collaborations and decolonization in ecological restoration work, post-wildfire, especially concerning ritualized aspects and spiritual meanings of prescribed fire, waterways restoration, and native plant restoration.