Please note: Christopher has left the "Religious Studies" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.
I am a Doctoral candidate in Religion and Modernity, with broad training in science and religion, secularism, and alternative religions in America and Asia. My dissertation work focuses on the religiosity of Silicon Valley's tech culture, with particular attention to practices of life-hacking, approaches to artificial intelligence, and a variety of tranhumanist endeavors. With the tech industry as a test-case, my work addresses theoretical questions key to studies of contemporary religion, such as how and why a set of cultural practices get labeled as religious or irreligious, and how imaginative practices engage with the productive technological institutions that are reshaping our world. Challenging many forms of the "secularization thesis," my work endeavors to show how, far from disenchanting our world, modern science and powerful media technologies have always been subject to enchantment.
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