Carole Myscofski

Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1981

Professor Myscofski teaches courses on Myth and Ritual, Women and Religions, Religion and Magic, Native American and African Religions, Latin American Religions, Religions of the African-American Diaspora, and Cults in America. She was honored in 2001 as the recipient of the Dupont Award for Teaching Excellence.

Professor Myscofski received her A.B. in the History and Philosophy of Religion, A.M. at the Divinity School, and Ph.D. in History of Religions, all at the University of Chicago. Before coming to IWU in 1991, she taught at Loyola University in Chicago and the University of Missouri at Columbia. Her research interests are aspects of women’s religious lives in colonial Brazil, and she has published on messianic movements, marriage and sexuality, women and magic, and women's confessions to the Brazilian Inquisition. For her archival research, she traveled to Brazil in 1979-80, and again in 1990, 2005, and 2009. 

Professor Myscofski has been vice-president and president of the Midwest Regional American Academy of Religion (AAR), and Editor of the AAR Academy Series published by Oxford University Press. She also served as the Editor for New Religions, one of 10 Area Editors, for the HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion (1995), a project sponsored by the AAR.