S. Jonathon O’Donnell

S. Jonathon O’Donnell is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Clinton Institute for American Studies, University College Dublin, researching the relationship between neo-charismatic demonology, authoritarianism, and “post-truth” politics in contemporary America. They received their PhD in the Study of Religions from SOAS, University of London, where their dissertation focused on intersections between sovereignty, demonology, and apocalypticism in the post-9/11 era. They have been published in journals such as ReligionEthnic and Racial Studies, and Political Theology, as well as in several edited collections, and their first monograph, Passing Orders: Demonology and Sovereignty in American Spiritual Warfare (Fordham University Press, 2020), interrogates the links between evangelical demonology and systems of sociopolitical ordering, with a specific focus on homophobia, antiblackness, Islamophobia, and settler colonialism. They are currently researching relations between evangelical climate skepticism, ascendant eco-fascism, and demonology through an ecocritical and critical race lens. News about their ongoing projects can be found at www.drsjodonnell.com and on Twitter @demonologian.

 

Contributions by S. Jonathon O'Donnell

podcast

Sovereignty and Spiritual Warfare

Join Savannah H. Finver and Dr. S. Jonathon O'Donnell as they talk demons, American politics, interdisciplinary methodologies, and the critical study of religion.

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podcast

The Weakest Link! | Mid-Year Special 2020 (with video)

It's a COVID-style international spectacular for the ninth(!) annual RSP mid-season special. It's time to play... the Weakest Link! Join Andie Alexander, Jonathon O'Donnel, Titus Hjelm, Naomi Goldenberg, Sidney Castillo, Russell McCutcheon, Ray Radford, and Megan Goodwin as David Robertson fires questions at them and Chris Cotter remotely operates PowerPoint! Who will win the coveted fictional research funding?

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podcast

The Roots of QAnon | Discourse! August 2020

What is QAnon? In this August 2020 episode of Discourse!, David Robertson, Megan Goodwin, Savannah Finver and Jonathon O'Donnell discuss this conspiracy movement's links to American religious history and contemporary political discourse.

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response

Futures Found Wanting

Figured as discursive objects, both the witch and the UFO exceeded (or were thought to exceed) the epistemic capacities of contemporary knowledge, necessitating the creation of new forms of knowing.In her recent book on confession and witchcraft in early modern France, French Studies scholar Virginia Krause argues that early modern demonology was a ‘science of the night'.The activities of the Devil, and of the witches who served him, occurred in the darkest hours,...

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