Karla Poewe and lrving Hexham

Short Biography

Irving Hexham's research focuses on new religions movements and the relationship between religion, politics and society. He has published 23 books including The Irony of Apartheid (Toronto 1981) and New Religions as Global Cultures (Boulder 1997) with Karla Poewe. His articles are to be found in various journals including African Affairs, the Journal of Southern African History, Religious Studies Review, Religion, Studies in Religion and The Journal of Contemporary History. He was awarded a festschrift Border Crossings: Explorations of an Interdisciplinary Historian (Stuttgart), eds. Ulrich van der Heyden and Andreas Feldtkeller in 2008. Currently, he is Professor of Religions Studies at the University of Calgary. He holds a BA (Hons) Religious Studies, from Lancaster University and an MA (with commendation) Religious Studies, and a PhD, History, from Bristol University.

Karla Poewe's research is located at the intersection of anthropology, history, religion, literature and theology. She has authored or co-authored papers in these areas for American Ethnologist, American Anthropologist, Dialectical Anthropology, Africa, African Studies Review, Canadian Journal of African Studies, Literature and Theology, Cultural Dynamics, Ethnos, Nova Religio, Journal of Contemporary Religion, the South African Historical Journal, and three encyclopedia. Her book New Religions and the Nazis (Routledge 2006) argues that for the time period between 1919 and 1933 the völkisch milieu was the breeding ground for German fascism. Always interested in the problem of surviving extreme conditions, increasingly ones caused by the complex dynamics of wars, her most recent research is centered on the integration of German refugees from the East into the occupied zones and the two Germanies after World War II. Poewe gave papers at the Dag Hammarskjold Centre, the University of London, The Centre for the Study of World Religions, Harvard, the University of Leipzig, the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz and the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin. She conducted fieldwork in Zambia (1973–1975); Namibia (1981–1983); South Africa (1987–1991); and did archival research and interviews in Germany since 1994. Poewe is professor of anthropology at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She received her PhD from the University of New Mexico (1976). Poewe studied Bemba at the University of Wisconsin (1972); Swahili at the University of Calgary (1971); and worked with Africanists T. O. Beidelman and John Middleton at New York University (1969).