CSUS affiliated faculty Pamela Klassen appointed Vice-Dean, undergraduate
CSUS affiliated faculty member Professor Pamela Klassen has been appointed as the inaugural Vice-Dean, Undergraduate, for a five-year term, effective July 1, 2016.
Professor Klassen received her PhD in 1997 from Drew University. She was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto in 1997, tenured in 2002 and, in 2011, was promoted to Full Professor. She holds a graduate appointment to the Department of Anthropology.
Professor Klassen’s research and teaching interests focus on the anthropology and history of Christianity, Indigenous peoples, and colonialism in North America, method and theory in the study of religion, and ritual, gender, media, and the public sphere. She has taught frequently within the Research Opportunity Program and the Research Excursions Program, and has developed a Community Engaged Learning course in her department. She is particularly interested in developing further opportunities for student international experience, and has travelled with undergraduate and graduate students to the Rainy River First Nations, New York City, and Germany.
She has published three books and two edited collections, including Spirits of Protestantism: Medicine, Healing, and Liberal Christianity (U of California Press, 2011), which won a 2012 American Academy of Religion Award of Excellence. She is the author or co-author of over 30 journal articles and book chapters on a range of topics from the home childbirth movement to colonial missions on the Northwest Coast. She recently finished a manuscript of her fourth book, “The Story of Radio Mind: A Missionary’s Journey on Indian Land.” Her current research project, “Supernatural Resources: Missionaries, Indigenous Peoples, and Mining in Northwestern British Columbia” is supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada. In 2015, she received the Anneliese Maier Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation in Germany. This award supports a five-year collaborative project entitled “Religion and Public Memory in Multicultural Societies” in cooperation with colleagues at the University of Tübingen, where she is also serving as Distinguished Visiting Professor of the Anthropology of Modern Religion from 2014-2017. In 2015, she was awarded the Northrop Frye Award of Excellence for the integration of Research and Teaching, from the University of Toronto Alumni Association. Professor Klassen is active in the field of digital humanities, and is working on an ongoing SSHRC-funded project with a team of graduate and undergraduate students in partnership with the Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre of the Rainy River First Nations.
Professor Klassen has served as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department for the Study of Religion from 2005-8, and again in 2009-10. She was Acting Director of the Jackman Humanities Institute in 2014, and has served as a Dean’s Designate in the Office of Student Academic Integrity since 2012.
