Tisa Wenger

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Tisa Wenger studies the intersections of race, religion, and empire in U.S. history, with particular attention to the cultural politics of religious freedom and to the problematics of religion for Native Americans as colonized nations. Her book Spirits of Empire: How Settler Colonialism Made American Religion, was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship and is forthcoming in 2026 from the University of North Carolina Press.

Wenger’s many publications include We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (University of North Carolina Press, 2009) and Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). With Sylvester Johnson, she co-edited Religion and U.S. Empire: Critical New Histories (NYU Press, 2022). Wenger also served as guest editor for a special issue of Pacific Historical Review titled “Religion in the Nineteenth-Century American West” (Summer 2023).

Wenger co-edits the University of Kansas book series, Studies in US Religion, Politics, and Law; as well as the journal Method and Theory in the Study of Religion. At Yale she holds a primary appointment in the Divinity School and secondary appointments in American Studies, History, and Religious Studies, where she serves as ADGS for the doctoral program in American Religious History. You can learn more about Wenger’s research and teaching at https://www.tisawenger.net/.