Alex Rocklin
Email
rocklin1@otterbein.edu
Office
Towers Hall
Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy & Religion
Alexander Rocklin received his PhD in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago. His work examines the politics of the category religion in the interactive making of Hinduism, Islam, and Afro-Atlantic religions in the colonial Caribbean. His first book, The Regulation of Religion and the Making of Hinduism in Colonial Trinidad, released in spring of 2019 from the University of North Carolina Press, looks at the role of the category religion in the regulation of the lives of Indian indentured laborers and the production of Hinduism in Trinidad. His current research analyzes the co-production of the categories race and religion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through a series of case studies of various individuals passing as “Hindu” in and between the circum-Caribbean region, the US, and beyond.
Education
- Ph.D., University of Chicago Divinity School, 2014
- M.A., University of Chicago Divinity School, 2007
- B.A., Wesleyan University, 2003
Publications
- “‘A Hindu is white although he is black’: Hindu Alterity and the Performativity of Religion and Race between the US and the Caribbean,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 58, no. 1, January 2016.
- “Obeah and the Politics of Religion’s Making and Unmaking in Colonial Trinidad.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion. vol. 83, no. 3, Sept. 2015.
- “Imagining Religions in a Trinidad Village: The Africanity of the Spiritual Baptist Movement and the Politics of Comparing Religions.” New West Indian Guide, vol. 86 no. 1 & 2 (2012).