I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at The University of Iowa. My research and teaching interests include:

*   Protestantism and Secularism in the United States

*   Critical Theory and Religion

*   Religion, Food, and the Body

*   Gender, Religion, and Culture


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###### The University of Iowa, 2021

Title: *Embodying the Secular: Power, Bodies, and American Secularism*

Directors: Kristy Nabhan-Warren and Jenna Supp-Montgomerie

Committee Members: Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz, Naomi Greyser, and Raymond Mentzer


Ph.D., Religious Studies

###### The University of Iowa, 2018

Comprehensive Exam Areas: American Religions; Critical Theory and Religion; and Religion, Food, and the Body


M.A., Religious Studies

The Graduate Certificate in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies

The Graduate Certificate in College Teaching

###### The University of Washington, 2011

Thesis: Fashioning Identities: New Relationships with Fashion and Modesty in Turkey


M.A., International Studies: Middle East Studies

###### Minnesota State University Moorhead, 2009

Thesis: Unveiling New Orientalism: An Exploration in Images


B.A., Major in Sociology of Religion

###### Concordia College, 2008

Thesis: The Body’s Iron Cage and Its Relationship to the Protestant Ethic


B.M., Major in Instrumental Music; Minor in Religion

Education

Honors & Awards

[Publications](#publications)

[Presentations and Lectures](#presentationsandlectures)

[Research Statement](#researchstatement)

[Research Assistantships](#researchassistantships)

[Dissertation Abstract](#dissertationabstract)


##### Refereed Journal Articles

*   “Digital Waistlands: Pro-Ana Communities, Religion, and Embodiment.” Journal of Religion, Media, and Digital Culture9 (2020): 207-227.

*   “Weighty Matter(s): Religion, Secularism, and American Weight Loss Culture.” Religion Compass14:2 (February 2020): 1-10.

*   “Spreading the Religion of Thinness from California to Calcutta:A Critical Feminist Postcolonial Analysis” with Michelle Lelwica andJenna McNallie.Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion24:1 (Spring 2009):20-41.(Published under Emma Hoglund.

##### Textbook Entries

*   “Evangelical Christianities in North America.” Bloomsbury Religion in North America. (In press.)

*   “Women and Christianity.”Bloomsbury Religion in North America. (In press.)

##### Book Reviews

*   Review of The Story of Radio Mind: A Missionary’s Journey on Indigenous Land, by Pamela E. Klassen. Material Religion15:5(July 2019): 644-645.

*   Review of Religious Affects:Animality, Evolution, and Power, by Donovan O. Schaefer.Material Religion12:4 (December 2016):515-516.


Publications

##### Conference Presentations

*   2020: “DNA Dieting: Genetic Testing, Nutrigenetics, and American Secularism,” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Virtual

*   2018: “Uploading the Body; Embodying the Online:Bodies, Digital Space, and the Pro-Ana Movement,” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Denver, Colorado

*   2018: “Networked Anorexia:Pro-Ana Communities, Network Logic, and the Internet,” Conference of the International Society for Media, Religion, and Culture, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado

*   2018: “Pro-Ana:An Internet-Mediated ‘New Religious Movement’?”Craft Critique Culture Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa

*   2017: “Disrupting Secular Space:Veiled Female Bodies in Turkish Shopping Malls,” Jakobsen Memorial Graduate Conference, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa

*   2016: “Fashioning Identities:New Relationships with Fashion and Modesty in Turkey,” Doing the Body in the 21st Century Conference, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

*   2008: “The Body’s Iron Cage and Its Relationship to the Protestant Ethic,” Annual Upper Midwest Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, St. Paul, Minnesota 

*   2007: “From California to Calcutta:Spreading the White-Western Devotion to Female Thinness—A Feminist Post-Colonial Analysis,” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, San Diego, California 

##### Colloquia

*   2019: “Biohacking the Body: Fasting, Silicon Valley, and Protestant Privilege,” The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa

##### Guest Class Lectures

*   2019: “Digital Waistlands: Pro-Ana Communities, Religion, and Embodiment,” inFood, Body, and Belief: A Global Perspective(RELS 2674),The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa

*   2014: “Spreading the Religion of Thinness from California to Calcutta:A Critical Feminist Postcolonial Analysis,”in Women’s Religious History(REL 374),Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota

*   2014: “Fashioning Identities:New Relationships with Fashion and Modesty inTurkey,”in Social Theory(SOC302),Minnesota State UniversityMoorhead, Moorhead, Minnesota


Presentations and lectures

American secularism is a pervasive and utterly inescapable aspect of life in the United States today. To participate in American public life is to engage with the particular secularism of the United States. And to engage with the particular secularism of the United States is to perpetuate a Protestant privilege embedded in the very fabric of this secularism on every scale, from institutions to individuals. While a number of scholars have attended to America’s particular form of secularism as it circulates in institutions like law, politics, and economics, less attention has been paid to how individuals embody American secularism in their daily lives. My research attends to this gap by exploring how gender, religion, and secularism intersect in everyday practices at the site of the body.

My dissertation, entitled “Embodying the Secular: Power, Bodies, and American Secularism,” argues that American secularism is best understood as fundamentally embodied and that this embodiment is made plain in contemporary techniques of body management. It finds that the body is a foundational site where it is possible to see the co-constitutive nature of the secular and the religious emerge as well as the scope and contours of their entangled ontologies. This entanglement is particularly clear when considering how American secularism is imbued with the same Protestant values, including commitments to individualism, self-control, and optimization, that orient American cultural life more broadly. Through case studies on direct-to-consumer genetic testing, biohacking, and the pro-ana movement, this dissertation explores the tensions between the discourses and practices that seek to sustain American secularism and the bodies that confound these attempts by expanding and contracting the field of possibility from which the contemporary American subject emerges.

My first case study explores the logics of direct-to-consumer genetic testing and the role this practice plays in contemporary subject production. Through an analysis of the published marketing and media of at-home genetic testing companies like 23andMe, I reveal how American individualism is refracted through genetic science and digital technologies at the site of the disciplined body. My second case study analyzes the rhetorics and practices of the hyper-masculinized biohacking movement and how this movement mobilizes and capitalizes on the particular logics of optimization. In this chapter, I consider how entrepreneurs like Tim Ferriss, Dave Asprey, and Ben Greenfield peddle biohacking techniques in ways that privilege particularly white, male, healthy, and wealthy bodies as a new form of biopower. My third case study demonstrates how self-control is managed in the online pro-ana movement through daily practices that sustain and diminish life and liveliness in abject, gendered bodies. In this chapter, I analyze the popular pro-ana site MyPancakeAddiction and track individuals embodying pro-ana digital culture through performances of a shared value system that reflect a particularly Protestant, and feminized, orientation toward the self and the body even as this movement is villainized in popular culture.

Intervening in religious studies, cultural studies, and gender studies, this project makes plain the ways in which American secularism is embodied and thus corrects a longstanding disregard for the bodily techniques that sustain public life in the United States. It is not arbitrary or insignificant that Protestant values and American secularism are co-constituted at the site of the gendered body through popular body management practices. Indeed, the continued daily performances of American secularism and hegemonic Protestantism by gendered bodies through popular body management practices reveals just how central embodiment is to the construction of American culture today.

My larger research agenda concerns the religio-secular assemblages that shape everyday life in contemporary America at the site of the body. I have a recent refereed article out with the Journal of Religion, Media, and Digital Culture entitled “Digital Waistlands: Pro-Ana Communities, Religion, and Embodiment,” which explores how women embody religio-secular values through their performances of pro-ana digital culture. Additionally, Religion Compass has recently published my peer-reviewed essay entitled “Weighty Matter(s): Religion, Secularism, and American Weight Loss Culture,” which summarizes the state of this fairly new field of research in religious studies. Finally, in addition to three upcoming conference presentations, I am developing a book proposal based on my dissertation that I will be prepared to discuss with editors in the spring.

My next research project considers the early nineteenth century American diet reform movements that flourished alongside the rapid urbanization, industrialization, and emergence of an identifiable print public in the United States. These movements not only linked body size with morality and connected body regulation to the rise of American consumer culture but also worked to establish hierarchies of race, sexuality, gender, and class. While much of the work on early American weight loss movements has centered on Sylvester Graham and his followers, I am exploring another trend: the water cure, a movement that was largely dominated by women in the United States. Most hydropathic spas were run by women and functioned as epicenters for dress reform, temperance, and the women’s rights movement. Indeed, the first National Dress Reform Association meeting was held at the Glenhaven Water-Cure. Through an analysis of this trend’s primary periodical Water-Cure Journal, published between 1845 and 1857, I will trace changing attitudes toward the body in light of the personal ads it ran that included height and weight specifications for prospective partners. Because other preferences like political orientation and religious affiliation were also listed, I expect to find evidence of shifting attitudes about religion as well. A careful reading and analysis of the Water-Cure Journal will offer important interventions in our understanding of evolving orientations not only toward the body but also towards religion, spirituality, and the increasingly “secular” imperative to count calories from the mid to late nineteenth century in the United States.

Broadly, my work is an interdisciplinary engagement with themes of Protestantism and secularism in America; critical theory and religion; religion, food, and the body; and gender, religion, and culture. I am committed to exploring the intersections of religion and secularism in the contemporary United States as they manifest as embodied practices in the everyday. This work offers important contributions to the fields of religious studies, cultural studies, and gender studies by shifting the primary unit of analysis from populations to the individual and by considering how the individual, gendered body mediates the secular and the religious through daily actions and behaviors.


Research Statement

Jenna Supp-Montgomerie, Religious Studies Department, 2015-2016

Michelle Lelwica, Religious Studies Department, 2006-2008[
](https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.emmarifai.com/resources/god_and_google.pdf)


Research Assistantships

###### Embodying the Secular: Power, Bodies, and American Secularism

American secularism is a pervasive and utterly inescapable aspect of life in the United States today. To participate in American public life is to engage with the particular secularism of the United States. And to engage with the particular secularism of the United States is to perpetuate a Protestant privilege embedded in the very fabric of this secularism on every scale, from institutions to individuals. While a number of scholars have attended to America’s particular form of secularism as it circulates in institutions like law, politics, and economics, less attention has been paid to how individuals embody American secularism in their daily lives.

“Embodying the Secular: Power, Bodies, and American Secularism” argues that American secularism is best understood as fundamentally embodied and that this embodiment is made plain in contemporary techniques of body management. It finds that the body is a foundational site where it is possible to see the co-constitutive nature of the “secular” and the “religious” emerge as well as the scope and contours of their entangled ontologies. This entanglement is particularly clear when considering how American secularism is imbued with the same Protestant values, including commitments to individualism, self-control, and optimization, that orient American cultural life more broadly. Through case studies on direct-to-consumer genetic testing, biohacking, and the pro-ana movement, this dissertation explores the tensions between the discourses and practices that seek to sustain American secularism and the bodies that confound these attempts by expanding and contracting the field of possibility from which the contemporary American subject emerges.

Intervening in religious studies, cultural studies, and gender studies, this project makes plain the ways in which American secularism is embodied and thus corrects a longstanding disregard for the bodily techniques that sustain public life in the United States. It is not arbitrary or insignificant that Protestant values and American secularism are co-constituted at the site of the gendered body through popular body management practices. Indeed, the continued daily performances of American secularism and hegemonic Protestantism by gendered bodies through popular body management practices reveals just how central embodiment is to the construction of American culture today.



Dissertation Abstract

Research

[Conferences Organized](#conferencesorganized)

[Service to Profession](#servicetoprofession)

[Departmental and University Service](#departmentalanduniversityservice)

[Professional and Academic Development](#professionalandacademicdevelopment)

[Affiliations](#affiliations)

[Language](#language)





*   2020 Religion and Media Workshop, Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Virtual

*   2019 Annual Upper Midwest Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, St. Paul, Minnesota

*   2018 Graduate Student Council Student Roundtable Series, Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Denver, Colorado

*   2018 Annual Upper Midwest Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, St. Paul, Minnesota

*   2017 Graduate Student Council Programming, Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Boston, Massachusetts


Conferences Organized

*   2018-Present Chair and Steering Committee Member of the Religion and Media Workshop of the American Academy of Religion

*   2019 Peer Reviewer for Communication, Culture and Critique

*   2017-2019	Student Director of the Upper Midwest Region of the American Academy of Religion

*   2018 Peer Reviewer for Contemporary Women’s Writing


Service to Profession

*   2019 Theta Alpha Kappa Treasurer, The University of Iowa

*   2015-2018	Graduate Student Critical Theory Reading Group Coordinator, The University of Iowa

*   2015-2018	Religion Graduate Student Organization (RGSO), The University of Iowa

    *   Co-Coordinator, 2017-2018

    *   Faculty Committee Representative, 2016-2018

    *   Graduate Student Mentor, 2016-2017

    *   Secretary/Treasurer, 2016

    *   Social Event Chair, 2015-2016

*   2016-2017	UI Council on the Status of Women Member, The University of Iowa

*   2015 Advanced Graduate Student Workshop Leader, The University of Iowa


Departmental and University Service

*   2019-Present Secularity and Sanctity in the Modern Era Working Group, Obermann Center, The University of Iowa



*   2015-2020	Graduate Student Critical Theory Reading Group, The University of Iowa



*   2020 Humanities for the Public Good Networking Workshop, Obermann Center, The University of Iowa



*   2020 Bridging the Gap: What I Said vs. What They Heard Workshop, The University of Iowa



*   2019 Social Justice and Vulnerability in the Classroom Workshop, The University of Iowa



*   2019 Managing the Market Summer Professional Development Series, The University of Iowa



*   2018 Summer Doctoral Seminar with Bonnie Dow, Wayne State University



*   2018 Dissertation Writing Summer Camp, The University of Iowa



*   2018 Grant and Fellowship Writing Seminar, The University of Iowa



*   2016 Iowa N.E.W. Leadership Institute, The University of Iowa

Professional and Academic Development

*   American Academy of Religion

*   International Society for Media, Religion, and Culture

*   Theta Alpha Kappa

*   Alpha Kappa Delta


Affiliations

Language

Service & Development

[Teaching Statement](#teachingstatement)

[University Teaching Experience](#universityteachingexperience)

[Teaching Evaluations](#teachingevaluations)

[Teaching Resources](#teachingresources)

[Online Teaching Resources](#onlineteachingresources)

[Sample Syllabi](#samplesyllabi)

[Diversity Statement](#diversitystatement)


My approach to teaching is informed by my commitment to education as a collaborative enterprise best pursued through pedagogies that involve every student in the learning process. As an educator, I am invested in developing dynamic classrooms utilizing creative pedagogies that inspire student engagement with me, assigned materials, and each other. As a result, I view each class as an opportunity to generate a learning community where students, working together, are inspired to take ownership of assigned materials and class topics through thoughtful discussion and analysis.

One of the ways I encourage students to take ownership of class topics is by empowering them with both theory and methodology at the beginning of each semester. For example, when I teach my course “Women and Religion in America Today,” students spend the first few class sessions reading and analyzing key concepts in theories of lived religion and ethnographic methodology. They then mobilize what they have learned as they explore course content throughout the rest of the semester by addressing various ways assigned primary and secondary source materials utilize these theoretical and methodological approaches. When writing their summary-analysis papers, which are designed to prepare them for our seminar-style class sessions, students address what they see as the strengths and limitations of the assigned author’s theoretical and methodological approaches and support their claims with textual references. This encourages students to actively and critically engage with assigned materials beyond simply learning content.

I am committed to facilitating seminar-style class sessions that are flexibly structured so that students can focus on topics from the assigned readings that they find relevant, challenging, or confusing. After working with students to form a solid foundation as a large group, I usually then facilitate paired or small group work to explore what they are learning in new and synergetic ways. Memorably, during one “Modern Religion and Culture” class session, we used sidewalk chalk outside on a beautifully sunny day to map historical timelines in preparation for an upcoming exam. By the end of our session, students were collaborating to construct visual representations of class materials in colorful, creative ways—including timelines in the shapes of maps, umbrellas and balloons—that we then ended up photographing for reference later as they prepared for their final exam.

I like to have semesters culminate in a series of peer-led mini lessons that students are responsible for crafting and executing with their classmates. Each lesson incorporates primary and secondary source materials, a lecture or activity, and a facilitated group discussion. In one iteration of my “Women and Religion in America Today” course, there was a lesson on yoga and cultural appropriation in the United States that was particularly compelling in that it asked fellow students to think about their own compliance with culturally appropriative practices embedded in an activity that nearly everyone had participated in. I find that concluding the semester with these mini lessons reinforces for students not only the importance of being mindful of theory and methodology but also, more importantly, their own potential for being contributing members of their academic communities.

In recognition of my success in teaching at The University of Iowa, I received the Rev. Louis P. Penningroth Award for excellence in teaching and mentoring from the department of religious studies in 2018. My effectiveness in the classroom is also attested to by my course evaluations. Statistically, I have been rated among the highest performing instructors both in my department and in the College of Liberal Arts Sciences more broadly. One student from my “Digital Media and Religion” course commented: “This has been my favorite class so far! Each class we are presented with new ideas and ways in which to view the world. I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to both the instructor and my classmates’ ideas on the topics covered in class.”

In all of my roles as an educator—as a teacher, a mentor, an advocate, and a facilitator—I aim to empower students with the knowledge that they are capable of not only contributing to but actually shaping the contours of their academic experiences. By the end of our time together, students leave my classes believing they are valuable and contributing members of their learning communities, both on campus and more broadly.


Teaching Statement

##### The University of Iowa, Instructor

*   Harry Potter: Mystery and Magic of Life (RELS:1997), Fall 2020

*   Women and Religion in America Today (RELS: 2986), Spring 2020

*   Digital Media and Religion (RELS: 2930/COMM:2079), Spring 2018

##### The University of Iowa, Teaching Assistant

*   Modern Religion and Culture (RELS:1250/HIST:1050), Spring 2017, Spring 2021

*   Medieval Religion and Culture (RELS:1225/HIST:1025), Fall 2018

*   Harry Potter: Mystery & Magic of Life (RELS:1997), Fall 2017

*   Digital Media and Religion (RELS:2930/COMM:2079), Spring 2017

*   Religion in America Today (RELS:1702), Fall 2015, Fall 2016

*   Religion and Sport in America (RELS:2877), Spring 2015, Spring 2016

##### The University of Iowa, Teaching Practicum Participant

*   Magic Machines:Technology and Social Change (COMM:4153), Fall 2015

*   Women and Power in U.S. History Through the Civil War (GWSS:3280/HIST:3280), Fall 2016

##### Concordia College, Teaching Assistant

*   Introduction to Religion (REL 100), Fall 2013

*   Catholicism (REL 328), Spring 2013

*   Religion and the Body (REL 382), Spring 2013

*   Women’s Religious History (REL 374), Fall 2012


University Teaching Experience

[Teaching Evaluation by Dr. Leslie Schwalm](https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.emmarifai.com/evals/leslie_schwalm_eval.pdf)

[Teaching Evaluation by Dr. Jenna Supp-Montgomerie](https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.emmarifai.com/evals/jenna_supp_montgomerie_eval.pdf)

[Teaching Evaluation by Dr. Kristy Nabhan-Warren](https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.emmarifai.com/evals/kristy_nabhan_warren_eval.pdf)

[Sample Student Evaluations](https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.emmarifai.com/evals/Rifai_Sample+Student+Evaluations.pdf)

[Workshop Evaluation by Sarah Goettsch](https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.emmarifai.com/evals/Rifai_Workshop+Evaluation_Sarah.pdf)


Teaching Evaluations

[Fashion as Technology? - PowerPoint](https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.emmarifai.com/resources/islamic_fashion.pdf)

[God and Google - PowerPoint
](https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.emmarifai.com/resources/god_and_google.pdf)


Teaching Resources

[Fashioning Identities - Prezi](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://prezi.com/-q01sfpkr8ro/?token%3Db8fce429c69b85ded7043eb6148c26d76d7b772c6bf70efc5dbdc6cf90934660\&sa=D\&source=hangouts\&ust=1612803704371000\&usg=AFQjCNGf1WMvf5OThSietnjDDVSr01TOFg)

[Veiling in Islam: An Introduction - PowerPoint](https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.emmarifai.com/resources/veiling_in_islam.pdf)


Online Teaching Resources

[“World(?) “Religion(s)(?)"(?)](https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.emmarifai.com/resources/Rifai_Syllabus_World+Religions.pdf)

[Women and Religion in America Today](https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.emmarifai.com/resources/women_and_religion_in_america_today.pdf)

[Harry Potter](https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.emmarifai.com/resources/harry_potter.pdf)

[Evangelical Christianities in America Today](https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.emmarifai.com/resources/evangelical_christianities_in_america_today.pdf)

[
](https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.emmarifai.com/resources/evangelical_christianities_in_america_today.pdf)


Sample Syllabi

My approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion has been profoundly shaped by my experiences tutoring ELL learners over the last dozen years. The challenges that immigrants and refugees face very rarely stem from a single aspect of their identities; rather, they, like all of us, interact with the world through intersecting identities related to categories like race, gender, sexuality, income, immigration status, and religion. As a result, I am committed, as an educator and researcher, to engaging with my students, colleagues, and fellow community members by acknowledging and celebrating our intersecting identity categories.

As a volunteer with a variety of service organizations that specialize in ELL programing for immigrant and refugee populations (including the Somali Services Coalition, Giving+Learning, and the YWCA), I have learned that the most effective teaching occurs when we, as educators, attend to the individual needs of our students. For example, standard ELL programming may not always address the needs of adult learners. Because ELL students are often navigating complex legal systems as they work through the immigration process, for instance, they may be better served with classes that unpack some of the complex legalese they are expected to negotiate for themselves and their families. As the spouse of a now naturalized citizen—my partner is a Palestinian who grew up in Lebanon—I have learned firsthand the stress and uncertainty that accompanies the naturalization process, particularly in a political climate that is often hostile towards immigrants broadly and Arabs more specifically.

As an educator at The University of Iowa, many, but not all, of my students are racially privileged and a considerable number of them are from rural Iowa, often with little experience interacting with diverse communities. I myself am from a very small town in Minnesota and grew up in a very racially and ethnically homogenous environment. As a result, I have worked to centralize diverse materials, methodologies, and theoretical approaches in my classes to equip my students with the tools necessary to engage and thrive in more diverse environments. For example, while it would, perhaps, be easier to teach a more standard version of a world religions course centralizing texts, institutional histories, and male experiences, my world religions syllabus centralizes questions of gender and what we learn about various religious traditions when we look to the margins rather than to the center.

As a scholar, I embrace diversity both in terms of my methodological and theoretical orientations as well as in my choice of subject matter. In addition to my work on North American religions, including mainstream denominations, new religious movements, and indigenous spiritualities, I have extensive graduate training in gender, women’s, and sexuality studies as well as considerable fluency with Islam and the history and politics of the Middle East. I approach these diverse topics by applying innovative theoretical perspectives like new materialisms and affect theory, which lend themselves to novel interpretations of the relationship between humans and their various environments.

Finally, I am committed to seeking out service and public engagement opportunities that specifically address intersectional concerns both on campus and in my community, from more explicitly activist engagements in the forms of marches, sit-ins, and rallies to more educational opportunities like leading and participating in workshops and discussions. As a graduate student at The University of Iowa, I served on the UI Council on the Status of Women and participated in the Iowa N.E.W. Leadership Institute. Additionally, I regularly offered workshops through a variety of local community organizations that worked to raise awareness and dispel misunderstandings concerning women and gender in Islam.

After graduation, I intend to continue to implement my intersectional feminist values through my research, teaching, and service both on and off campus.
