Travis Cooper (he/his) is an Associate Adjunct Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Indianapolis. He holds a double doctoral degree in anthropology and religious studies. Between 2018 and 2021 he was a Research Associate affiliated with the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University—Bloomington. In 2019 and 2020 he was a research fellow with the Lived Religion in the Digital Age initiative (St. Louis University) and an inaugural participant in American Examples (The University of Alabama). In 2017 and 2018 he served as an editorial assistant for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, published by Oxford University Press. He's given talks at Harvard University, The University of Toronto, The University of Antwerp, The University of Chicago, and the University of California Santa Barbara, among other leading institutions. His teaching, at Indiana University and Butler University, has focused on global issues, religious studies, media, popular culture, and film. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana.
Dr. Cooper's first book came out with Indiana University Press in August 2022. He's currently working on a second book on cinema, memory, and metaphor. His writing has appeared in a wide range of magazines, journals, and public scholarship venues including Film Criticism, Flow Journal, Sapiens, Urbanities, Culture on the Edge, Reverberations, anthro{dendum}, The Religious Studies Project, Syndicate, Reading Religion, Bulletin for the Study of Religion, Studying Religion in Culture, and Religion in Place. He's published research with formal academic journals including Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Religion & Society: Advances in Research, Religion & Gender, Symposia, Religion, Religions, PentecoStudies, Religion & Film, and The Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. For more info, see his CV.