MPhil., Religion, Columbia University, 2023
M.A., Religion, Columbia University, 2021
M.A., Ethnic Studies, California State University, San Francisco, 2016
B.A., Philosophy, California State University, Stanislaus, 2010
Biography
Nanea Renteria is a PhD candidate studying Indigenous religious traditions at Columbia University. Her work examines questions of gender, tradition, and power in communities that relate to peyote as a religious sacrament. Her dissertation uses ethnographic methods to document the life experiences of contemporary Indigenous women, LGBTQ+, and two-spirit participants in peyote communities, exploring how ideas about gender inform practices of tradition and healing. Her project also deploys archival methods to investigate the production of the distinction between religion and medicine at the turn of the 19th century, with attention to the racialized and gendered logics of medical authority illuminated by discourses around peyote. Nanea holds a BA in Continental Philosophy from California State University Stanislaus, an MA in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University, and an MA and MPhil in Religion from Columbia. Her fieldwork is funded by the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship.