Undergraduate Advisor for Religious Studies
Michael Pasquier, a Louisiana native, received his B.A. at LSU, graduating summa cum laude in 2002 with majors in History and Religious Studies. He received his Ph.D. in American Religious History at Florida State University in 2007. He has been a member of the Religious Studies faculty at LSU since 2008, though he spent his first year at the Harvard Humanities Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2010 he has served as the undergraduate advisor for Religious Studies.
Dr. Pasquier specializes in the history of religion and culture in North America. His first book dealt with French Catholic missionaries in North America, and he has started his next book on the history of Native American, European, and African religions in French colonial Louisiana. He is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Southern Religion. He also works with the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio as a consultant on the cultural impact of environmental changes in the Lower Mississippi Delta.
Courses Offered
- REL 1000 Religions of the World
- REL 2000 Introduction to the Study of Religion
- REL 3000 Christianity
- REL 3010 American Religions
- REL 3010 Religion in Louisiana
- REL 4161 History of Religion in the United States
- REL 4171 Religion in Southern Culture
- HNRS 2021 Religion and the Cinematic Experience
- HNRS 3031 Religion and Public Life in America
- Great Places Research Award, “Measured Change: Tracking Transformations on Bayou Lafourche” (w/ LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio), Environmental Design Research Association, 2011
- Seminar Fellow, Young Scholars in American Religion, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, 2010-12
- Research Grant (w/ Kristi Dykema and Jeff Carney), LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio
- Council on Research Summer Stipend, Louisiana State University, 2010
- Service-Learning Faculty Scholar, Center for Community Engagement, Learning, and Leadership, Louisiana State University, 2010
- Visiting Scholar, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in association with the Harvard Humanities Center, 2008-09
- Graduate Research and Creativity Award, Florida State University, 2007
- Dorothy Mohler Research Grant, Catholic University of America, 2006
- Filson Fellowship, Filson Historical Society, Louisville, KY, 2006
- Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism Research Travel Grant, University of Notre Dame, 2005
- Hugh F. Rankin Prize for Best Graduate-Level Paper, Louisiana Historical Association, 2005
- Phi Beta Kappa, Louisiana State University, 2002
Books
- Fathers on the Frontier: French Missionaries and the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the United States, 1789-1870. Religion in America Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Edited Volumes
- Gods of the Mississippi. Ed. by Michael Pasquier. Indiana University Press, forthcoming 2012.
Articles and Chapters
- “Catholicism to 1945.” Pages 478-90 in The Blackwell Companion to Religion in America. Ed. by Philip Goff. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
- “‘Though Their Skin Remains Brown, I Hope Their Souls Will Soon Be White’: Slavery, French Missionaries, and the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the American South.” Church History 77.2 (June 2008): 337-370.
- “Medjugorje in the American South: Our Lady of Tickfaw and the Politics of Devotion.” U.S. Catholic Historian 24.4 (Fall 2006): 125-148.
- “Our Lady of Prompt Succor: The Search for an American Marian Cult in New Orleans.” Pages 128-49 in Saints and Their Cults in the Atlantic World. Ed. by Margaret Cormack. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006.