Richard Newton

Richard Newton is Associate Professor and Undergraduate Director in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. Newton is the author of Identifying Roots: Alex Haley and the Anthropology of Scriptures (Equinox 2020) and co-editor of Fieldnotes in the Critical Study of Religion: Revisiting Classical Theorists (Bloomsbury 2023). He is also the creator of the social media professional development network, Sowing the Seed: Fruitful Conversations in Religion, Culture, and Teaching. His areas of interest include theory and method in the study of religion, African American history, the New Testament in Western imagination, American cultural politics, and pedagogy in religious studies. His research explores how people create “scriptures” and how those productions operate in the formation of identities and cultural boundaries.