Devin Burns

Devin Burns is a scholar of American religion in the nineteenth century American South. Her work centers around the relationship between religion and white supremacy during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Her dissertation, "In Christian Bonds: The Confederate Episcopal Church and the Making of a Lost Cause Historiography, 1850-1915" leverages the short-lived Confederate Episcopal Church (CEC) as a site to untangle the relationships between religion and the Civil War, the Lost Cause, and white supremacy in the American South. It argues that the CEC’s own archival practices, as well as postbellum church histories, contributed to Lost Cause ideologies. She is currently working on revising this work for publication. 

Burns is invested in understanding difficult histories through the production of knowledge and archives. She works to ground the study of the relationship between power and knowledge production in specific historical case studies as well as contemporary cultural studies. To that end, Burns researches influencer culture, particularly related to motherhood and whiteness on Instagram. She is working on a long term project that connects influencer culture to historical instances of conservative motherhood movements.

In addition to her research, Burns places importance on her teaching. She takes guidance from abolitionist organizers in the creation of learning communities in both her in person and online courses. She believes in allowing students to bring their whole selves to the classroom and emphasizes the decentering of past historical narratives in favor of recentering the voices of marginalized peoples. She has taught classes such as Religion in America, Life, Sex and Death, Religion and Pop Culture, and Religion, Race, and Ethnicity.