Steven Ramey
Associate Professor

Religions of Asia, Diaspora Indian Religions and Global Identities, Indian Identities in the US South

Meet Prof. Ramey here...

Office Phone: 348-4218
email: sramey@bama.ua.edu

Did you know that Prof Ramey Directs the Asian Studies Minor?

Since the Fall of 2006, Prof. Ramey has planned our public events.

Click the book cover to learn more about Prof. Ramey's first book...

Prof. Ramey has also published his work in the following periodicals (click the covers to learn more)...

Prof. Ramey also has chapters in the following edited works...

Religion in the Contemporary South: Changes, Continuities, and Contexts (2005)

Encyclopedia of Religion in the South, 2d ed. (2005)

And he has reviewed in such journals as...

Steven Ramey, who joined the faculty as Assistant Professor in the Fall 2006, completed his Ph.D. in the religions of South Asia, especially focusing on Hinduism and Islam, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds a M.Div. from Emory University in Atlanta and a B.A. in History from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. He has taught previously at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and Furman University.

As of the Fall of 2011, Dr. Ramey was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor and awarded tenure.

Dr. Ramey's primary research focuses on the contemporary formation of religious practices in contexts of migration, particularly analyzing the contestations surrounding subgroups within a religion. He is continuing extensive research with people from the region of Sindh who assert a clear Hindu identification but whose practices, which incorporate Hindu deities and texts, the Guru Granth Sahib of Sikhism, and Sufi Muslim saints, lead others to question the Hindu identification of the Sindhis. He is also researching South Asian religions in the southeastern United States, especially focusing on Indo-Caribbean Hindus and Sindhi Hindus in this context. He uses the case of the Sindhi Hindus, Indo-Caribbean Hindus, and other subgroups to analyze the ways religious boundaries are constructed and contested in both academic studies and contemporary societies and the impact of those processes on minority groups.

Using his ethnographic work in India and the Southeastern United States, he has published and presented on the ways Sindhi Hindus construct their traditions in various contexts, represent themselves to non-Sindhis, and negotiate the challenges that their minority position creates. His book, Hindu Sufi or Sikh: Contested Practices and Identifications of Sindhi Hindus in India and Beyond, is scheduled for publication in October 2008 with Palgrave Macmillan Press.

Dr. Ramey also serves as the Chair of the History of Religions (to be renamed Religions of Asia) section of the American Academy of Religions Southeast and is a member of the Steering Committee for the North American Hinduism Consultation of the AAR.

A recent copy of Prof. Ramey's c.v.
can be found here (PDF).

Courses

Among the courses that Prof. Ramey teaches are:

REL 100 Introduction to the Study of Religion
REL 208 Hinduism
REL 210 Buddhism
REL 220 Survey of Asian Religions
REL 236 Islam
REL 370 Survey of Islamic Traditions
REL 373 Advanced Studies in Asian Religions
REL 483 Seminar in Asian Religions