Please note: Grazina has left the "Religious Studies" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.
I am a scholar in Religious Studies (Ph.D., Duke 2022). In my scholarly endeavors, I focus on the intersections of critical race theory, feminism, and religion, with particular attention to the way they apply to the Eastern European context. I credit these academic interests to having grown up in Eastern Europe (Lithuania) during its turbulent transition from the Soviet Union occupied territories to independent, nationalist states, and to my first-hand experience of the role of religion in geopolitical and state-building processes.
My dissertation, "The Making of Savage Europe: Religious Difference and the Idea of Eastern Europe" focuses on the role of religion in the emergence of the idea of "Eastern Europe" during the Enlightenment. I draw on the travel narratives and cartographic evidence of the period to trace the intellectual history of Eastern Europe and argue that the region was constructed as an intra-European colonial space patterned on a broader, global racial logic.
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