Professor Chesnut is a leading international authority on the history of religion in modern Latin America, especially Brazil and Mexico. He has recently given guest lectures on Latin American religion at Yale, USC, Notre Dame, Ohio State, and University of Texas. Professor Chesnut has been a member of the Undergraduate, Graduate, and Executive Committees and advises several graduate students.
Research:
Dr. Chesnut is the author of two books and many scholarly articles. His first book Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty (Rutgers University Press, 1997 link), examines the meteoric growth of Pentecostalism among the popular classes of Brazil. Whereas Born Again in Brazil focuses on a single religion, his second book, Competitive Spirits: Latin America's New Religious Economy (Oxford 2003) considers the three religious groups that have prospered the most in the region's new pluralist landscape, Charismatic Catholicism, Protestant Pentecostalism and African diasporan faiths. Competiitve Spirits was recently published in paperback (link). The Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint, is the subject of his next book.
Teaching:
Professor Chesnut teaches the following undergraduate courses on a regular basis: History of Brazil, The U.S. and Latin America, Latin America Since 1820, and Food, Drink and Drugs of Latin America. At the graduate level he teaches Brazilian historiography and a seminar on Latin American religious history.
Selected Publications
Competitive Spirits: Latin America's New Religious Economy, (Oxford University Press, 2003).
Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty, (Rutgers University Press, 1997).
Chapter on the religious economy of conversion to Pentecostalism in Latin America in edited volume “Conversion of a Continent: Religious Identity and Change in Latin America,” forthcoming 2007, Rutgers University Press.
"Witches, Wailers and Welfare: The Religious Economy of Funerary Culture and Witchcraft in Latin America," Latin American Research Review, 2005.
"A Preferential Option for the Spirit: The Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Latin America's New Religious Economy," Latin American Politics and Society, Vol. 45:1, Spring, 2003.
"Pragmatic Consumers and Practical Products: The Success of Pneumacentric Religion Among Women in Latin America's New Religious Economy, " Review of Religious Research, Vol. 45:1, pp. 20-31.
