Emma Anderson graduated with a Ph.D. in American Religious History from Harvard University in 2005, and has taught at the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa ever since. An expert on the religious encounter between Catholic missionaries and Indigenous peoples in colonial North America, she is the author of two award-winning books published by Harvard University Press. Her first book, The Betrayal of Faith: The Tragic Journey of a Colonial Native Convert explores the momentous transatlantic transformation of an Indigenous boy, Pierre-Antoine Pastedechouan. Her second work, The Death and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs critically re-examines the lives and deaths of eight slain Jesuits in the 1640s, and probes the ongoing consequences of their veneration for Indigenous peoples.
As Pathy Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies, Prof. Anderson teaches the Program in Humanistic Studies course, Indigenous Peoples and Christianity, and continues to write her current monograph-in-progress, Dawn in the West: How the Thought of Indigenous People Ushered in Modernity, which delineates the seminal impact of Indigenous perspectives upon Enlightenment philosophes. To read more about Anderson’s teaching, publications, and current projects, please visit her website at www.emmajaneanderson.com.
