RACHEL CARBONARA: I
am Rachel Carbonara.
I am a PhD student in the
anthropology and sociology
of religion program here
in the Divinity School.
I study spiritual
tourism in South America.
I'm focused mostly
on Peru and Brazil
and right now I'm
really focusing
on the Cusco region of Peru.
So what that means
is that I look
at new age spirituality in
very contemporary formations
of spiritual practice as they're
occurring transnationally
with tourists traveling from the
United States and other places,
but mostly the United States,
to South America in order
to participate in
certain shamanic
and indigenous Peruvian
rituals and practices.
I came to the ASR program
here in the Divinity School
for a number of reasons.
So I did my undergraduate
degree in sociology
and I was really
interested in religion
because through
studying social science
it had become apparent
to me that religion
is a really important thing
to understand if you're going
to understand social
dynamics in just
about any social or
cultural context.
And I wanted to continue
with social science
in the setting of
a Divinity School,
and specifically the
U Chicago Divinity
School because the faculty
here are social scientists,
but they are really in
an environment where
the focus of their
study is on religion
and on understanding the
complexities of religion
and the social dynamics that
are really specific to religion
as a phenomenon.
And that's something
that I think I really
wouldn't be able to do if I
was just in a social science
program.
So there's a lot of overlap
here in the Divinity
School with people
who are studying
religion in different contexts.
And the program here allows me
to have a lot of conversations
with those people.
So for example, I am
co-coordinating the religion
and human sciences workshop
this year along with another PhD
student who does
history of religion.
And so we're having
interdisciplinary conversations
all the time which really
adds to the richness
in my own understanding of
religion and in the research
that I'm producing.
I have also just found the
community in the Divinity
School to be really fruitful
academically and personally.
I have also been on the board
of the Divinity Students
Association for two years.
Right now I am the Secretary
of the Divinity Students
Association So there's a
really strong community here
and a community with a really
long and rich tradition
of investigating religion from a
variety of different viewpoints
and a variety of different
disciplinary perspectives.
And we really spend a lot of
time engaging with one another
and that has really
strengthened my ability
to really understand religion
in my own research coming
from a social
science background.
Being able to constantly be in
conversation in the Divinity
School does a
really excellent job
of cultivating
conversation between people
who are studying
really different things
and that's what I
really value here.
