My Biography
Thomas Raverty’s (BA, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis,1972; MA, Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1977; MA, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 1979; PhD, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1990) areas of concentration are in the anthropology of religion (generally), ritual studies, the New Age movement, interreligious dialogue, and the anthropology of Benedictine monasticism. His autoethnographic research includes a study of a multicultural and multireligious intentional community in Colorado, which resulted in the book Refuge in Crestone: A Sanctuary for Interreligious Dialogue (Lexington, 2014). Part of this study involved thinking about ritual as commodity and the resulting generation of a ritual economy. He’s also published several papers dealing with research initiatives into various aspects of the community life in Benedictine monasticism. Thomas would like to see sociocultural anthropologists get more creative about the ways in which theory and method could be applied outside the traditional disciplinary margins. He has been involved in interreligious dialogue with Buddhist monastics in China, Tibet, India, and Nepal, and his interest here is how the application of some aspects of traditional anthropological theory and methodology could enhance the praxis of engaging in interreligious dialogue. Thomas’s first AAA annual meeting was held in Atlanta Georgia.