Jens Kreinath

http://www.wichita.edu/anthropology

Associate Professor| Wichita State University, Department of Anthropology

Primary Field	Cultural Anthropology
Position	Associate Professor

http://www.wichita.edu/anthropology

Associate Professor, Wichita State University, Department of Anthropology

E-mail	jens.kreinath@wichita.edu
vCard

Interest/Specialty Areas

Religious Minorities and Cultural Dynamics in Turkey and the Middle East; Syncretism, Hybridity, and the Dynamics of Interreligious Contact; Aesthetics of Religion and Semiotics of Ritual; Method and Theory in the Study of Religion; Concept Formation in Study Ritual; Reflexivity in Ethnographic Fieldwork; Ritual Theory; Anthropology of Islam; Visual Anthropology

Dr. Kreinath received training in theory and methodology related to the study of religion, ritual, and culture. Besides holding degrees in Theology and History of Religion as well as in Philosophy—all received from the University of Heidelberg—he received in 2006 his doctoral degree in social/cultural anthropology form the same university. As a member of a research group on ritual theory and the history of religions, he carried out research in 2000 on the Yasna, a daily performed ritual of Zoroastrian high-priests. Together with Refika Sariönder, he conducted fieldwork in 2002 in Istanbul among the Alevi on the reflexive dynamics of the cem, a weekly observed community ritual. Since 2010, he studies the coexistence of religious minorities in Turkey and more specifically on the local and global dynamics of inter-religious relations in Hatay, the southernmost province of Turkey. His current research is primarily on Christian and Muslim communities in Antakya (formerly Antioch). He is member of an international research collaboration, “Reassembling Democracy: Ritual as Cultural Resource,” funded by the Norwegian Research Council. The aim of his research is to inquire the impact of the interreligious Antakya Choir of Civilizations on transforming the interaction of the local religious communities and to analyze the internal dynamic of this interreligious choir. Besides, he was in 2014-2015 visiting scholar in the research group “Local Dynamics of Globalization in the Premodern Levant,” funded by the Centre of Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, which allowed him to further his studies of local infrastructure of pilgrimage sites in the northern Levant in a more historical perspective.

Phone	(316) 978-3195
Email	anthropology@wichita.edu