Greg Johnson

• Director of Graduate Studies
• Assistant Professor
• Ph.D. University of Chicago, 2003
• Co-Chair of the Law, Religion, and Culture Group, American Academy of Religion
  

Contact Information

• Humanities 280
• 303-492-7095
• Office Hours: Wed 2pm - 3:30pm, Fri 9:30am - 11am, and by appointment
• greg.johnson@colorado.edu 
  

Primary Teaching Areas and Opportunities for Student Supervision

• Indigenous religious traditions
• Contemporary American Indian and Hawaiian contexts
• Repatriation, reburial, NAGPRA
• Theory and method in the academic study of religion
• Religion and law
• Religion, discourse and rhetoric
• Ritual studies 

Selected Publications Sacred Claims:  Repatriation and Living Tradition. University of Virginia Press (2007). “Authenticity, Invention, Articulation:  Theorizing Contemporary Hawaiian Traditions from the Outside.” In Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (forthcoming). “Social Lives of the Dead:  Contestations and Continuities in Native Hawaiian Repatriation Contexts.”  In Culture and Belonging:  Symbolic Landscapes and Contesting Identity in Divided Societies, edited by Marc Ross. The University of Pennsylvania Press (forthcoming). “Narrative Remains:  Articulating Indian Identities in the Repatriation Context.”  Comparative Studies in Society and History 47:3 (2005), 480-506.  “Facing Down The Representation of an Impossibility:  Indigenous Responses to a ‘Universal’ Problem in the Repatriation Context.” Culture and Religion 1:6 (2005), 57-78. “Incarcerated Tradition:  Native Hawaiian Identities and Religious Practice In Prison Contexts.”  In Historicizing Tradition in the Study of Religion, edited by Steven Engler and Gregory Grieve. Walter de Gruyter (2005), 195-210. “Naturally There:  Discourses of Permanence in the Repatriation Context.” History of Religions 44:1 (2004), 36-55. “Ancestors Before Us:  Manifestations of Tradition in a Hawaiian Dispute.”  Journal of the American Academy of Religion 71:2 (2003), 327-346. “Tradition, Authority and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.”  Religion 32 (2002), 355-381.

Overview

      Greg Johnson received his B.A. degree from this department in 1990.  He received his M.A. in 1992 and his Ph.D. in 2003 from the University of Chicago.  Johnson returned “home” to teach as a visiting instructor in this department during his dissertation writing years, before taking a position at Franklin & Marshall College in 2002.  He returned to the University of Colorado as Assistant Professor of Religious Studies in 2005 and has been Director of Graduate Studies since January of 2007.

      While at the University of Chicago Divinity School Johnson developed an abiding interest in contemporary indigenous religious traditions, particularly as expressed in moments of legal struggle.  After considerable coursework in the Department of Anthropology, this broad area of inquiry was sharpened to a focus upon repatriation disputes.  His dissertation, “The Terms of Return:  Religious Discourse and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act,” was written under the supervision of Bruce Lincoln and Anthony C. Yu.  Johnson has maintained an active research agenda with reference to repatriation issues, traveling regularly to federal meetings and to a number of field sites, especially in Hawai`i.  This research has been funded by various sources, including the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Academy of Religion.  Beyond repatriation, Johnson’s research focuses upon contemporary indigenous subsistence strategies, sacred land issues, religious life in prisons, and the cultural politics of sovereignty struggles.  Johnson published his first book, Sacred Claims, in 2007 and is currently working on his next, Religion in the Moment:  Contemporary Lives of Indigenous Traditions.

Courses Taught