Sam R. Stella

Sam Stella is a doctoral student in the Columbia University Department of Religion. He received a B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Missouri, an M.A. from the University of Chicago Divinity School, and a S.T.M. from Yale Divinity School with a certificate from the Institute of Sacred Music. His research at the ISM investigated how early twentieth-century Protestants and Catholics in the Mexico/US borderlands engaged and contested one another via their respective material cultures, and the miraculous effects these materialities mediated. He is also interested in how converts from Catholicism to Protestantism negotiate the theological demands of changed theories of materiality and sacred efficacy. His ongoing research interests revolve around the longer history of the negotiations necessitated by the interplay of Catholic and Pentecostal media usage in the American continents.