Angie Heo

Angie Heo is an anthropologist of religion with specialties in media, economy, and politics. Her first book, The Political Lives of Saints: Christian-Muslim Mediation in Egypt (University of California Press, 2018), examines how Coptic Orthodoxy mediates social relations between Christians and Muslims in Egypt. It analyzes how material and visual cultures of saint veneration shape church-state authoritarianism, majority-minority relations, and sectarian violence. Her next book turns to the study of Protestantism and anti-communism in the Korean Peninsula. At the broadest level, it traces the Cold War’s deep and ongoing influence on the ideological and capitalist contours of Christianity in the divided Koreas. Drawing from her research in Egypt and Korea, Heo has collaborated with anthropologists, historians, and theologians interested in religion in Central and Eastern Europe and East Asia. These collaborations have resulted in two publications, Praying with the Senses (2018, edited by Luehrmann) and Religion and Borders in (Post-) Cold War Peripheries (2019, co-edited by Heo and Kormina).

Heo’s teaching at the Divinity School focuses on social scientific approaches to the study of religion. Her courses explore ethnographic methods and anthropological modes of inquiry and analysis.