People

Michael Pasquier

Dr. Michael Pasquier

Professor of Religious Studies and History
Jaak Seynaeve Professor of Christian Studies

Ph.D.: American Religious History, Florida State University, 2007

Phone: 225-578-2271
Email: [email protected] 
Office: 210A Coates

Biography

Michael Pasquier, a native of Louisiana, received his B.A. at LSU in 2002 with majors in History and Religious Studies. He received his PhD. in American Religious History at Florida State University in 2007. He was a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008-2009. He has been a member of the LSU Religious Studies faculty since 2008. While at LSU, Dr. Pasquier served as Director of the Religious Studies Program (2013-2019) and Director of the Center for Collaborative Knowledge (2018-2021). He is currently Director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts program. Dr. Pasquier has been Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies since August of 2021.

Areas of Interest

Dr. Pasquier specializes in the history of religion in the United States, with areas of concentration in American Catholicism and religion in the U.S. South. His book, Fathers on the Frontier, profiles the lives of French missionary priests and the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. His book, Religion in America: The Basics, is a concise introduction to the study of American religious history.

Dr. Pasquier's work on religion and culture in the Mississippi River Valley has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Whiting Foundation. He is the editor of Gods of the Mississippi, a collection of essays on the history of religion in the Mississippi Valley; co-producer of the film Water Like Stone, a documentary about a Louisiana fishing village facing environmental and economic decay; and producer of the podcast Coastal Voices, an audio documentary series that explores the relationship between people, land, and water in coastal Louisiana.

Dr. Pasquier is currently at work on an introduction to American Catholic history and an environmental history of religion in coastal Louisiana.

Courses Offered

  • REL 1000 Religions of the World
  • REL 2000 Introduction to the Study of Religion
  • REL 2033: American Religions
  • REL 3000 Christianity
  • REL 3010: Religion in Louisiana
  • REL 3102: American Catholic History
  • REL/HIST 4161: History of Religion in the United States
  • REL 4171: Religion in Southern Culture
  • HNRS 2021: Religion and the Cinematic Experience
  • HNRS 3031: Religion and Public Life in America 
  • LIBA 7000: Liberal Arts Methods of Inquiry
  • LIBA 7900: Liberal Arts Themes and Commonalities

Awards and Honors

  • Start-Up Grant, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 2019-2021
  • Public Engagement Fellowship, The Whiting Foundation, 2017-2018
  • Emerging Scholar Rainmaker Award for Research and Creativity, LSU, 2014
  • Summer Stipend, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2013
  • Robert Udick Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award, LSU, 2012
  • Art Works (Design) Grant, National Endowment for the Arts, 2012-2013
  • Fellow, Summer Institute on American Religion and the Spatial Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2012
  • Great Places Research Award, Environmental Design Research Association, 2011
  • Fellow, Young Scholars in American Religion, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, 2010-12
  • Research Grant, LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio, 2011
  • Visiting Scholar, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2008-09
  • Dorothy Mohler Research Grant, Catholic University of America, 2006
  • Filson Fellowship, Filson Historical Society, 2006
  • Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism Research Travel Grant, University of Notre Dame, 2006
  • Phi Betta Kappa, Louisiana State University, 2002

Selected Publications

Books

Film

  • Water Like Stone. Co-Producer and Co-Writer with Director Zack Godshall, 2013. 

Articles and Chapters

  • "Missionaries, Martyrdom, and Warfare in French Colonial Louisiana, 1699-1764," Catholic Historical Review 105, no. 2 (Spring 2019): 304-326.
  • "Flooded Catholicism: Disaster and Prayer in Coastal Louisiana," Exchange: Journal of Contemporary Christianities in Context 48 (2019): 204-213.
  • "Catholicism and Race," in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Race in American History, eds. Paul Harvey and Kathryn Gin Lum (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 172-190. 
  • "The Invisibility of Voodoo, or, the End of Catholic Archives in America," American Catholic Studies 125, no. 3 (Fall 2014), 12-15.
  • "Creole Catholicism before Black Catholicism: Religion and Slavery in French Colonial Louisiana," Journal of Africana Religions 2, no. 2 (2014), 271-279.
  • "Religion and the American Landscape." Religion Compass 7:4 (March 2013): 137-148.
  • "The Lost Graves of the Morganza Floodway." Places (February 2013).
  • "Though Their Skin Remains Brown, I Hope Their Souls Will Soon Be White': Slavery, French Missionaries, and the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the American South." Church History 77.2 (June 2008): 337-370.
  • "Medjugorje in the American South: Our Lady of Tickfaw and the Politics of Devotion." U.S. Catholic Historian 24.4 (Fall 2006): 125-148.

 

LSU