Ann Taves

Professor
Faculty Advisor

Office Location

HSSB 3085

Specialization

Professor of Religious Studies, UC Santa Barbara

Areas: American religious history; theory and method in the study of religion; interdisciplinary approaches to the study of experience

Projects

I am interested in the processes whereby people – individually and collectively – come to perceive some things as extra-ordinary (or not); adjudicate such claims within and between groups, traditions, and cultures; and mobilize them in the construction of alternate realities via texts, networks, movements, and organizations. With the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship, I am currently working on a book entitled Revelatory Events: Experience and Appraisal in the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths, which looks at the role of unusual experiences in the earliest stages of three groups (Mormonism, Alcoholics Anonymous, and A Course in Miracles study groups).  For publications and other information, see faculty page here.