Grace Christensen
Grace is a PhD student in American religions at Northwestern University. Their research interests focus on the movement of spirits workers from the southern United States into the urban North during the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By unpacking the postbellum movements of spirit workers, Grace uncovers how spirit workers of varied racial backgrounds communicate with and influence each other’s religious thought, teachings, and practices as they were communicating with and being influenced by spirits and the spirit world. Grace explores these interests through a historical, theological, and theoretical reading of the archive to reveal how spirit workers were in conversation with each other, sharing knowledge of this world and the next, and shaping each other’s cosmologies. Grace’s M.A. thesis “‘Mystery Is as Old as Life’: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s Explorations of the Otherworldly” received honors. Their advisor is Robert Orsi.