Jessica Rivers is a Performance and Ethnographic Studies doctoral student in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University. Her interests include transnational evangelical movements in the Americas, embodiment and knowledge produ
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Jessica Rivers is a Performance and Ethnographic Studies doctoral student in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University. Her interests include transnational evangelical movements in the Americas, embodiment and knowledge production, social uses of media, and class, stigma and reputation management. Previous works include an ethnography of New York City’s slam poetry scene, a study of humor in documentary spectatorship, an analysis of capoeira’s once stigmatized and now championed relationship to Afro-Brazilian religion, and a think-piece on current iterations of the trope of cannibalism in Brazilian cinema. Working toward her dissertation project, Jessica spent summer 2010 in Rio de Janeiro interviewing pastors, congregants and jiu jitsu fighters at evangelical churches, and trained with the Igreja Batista Betania’s jiu jitsu academy.
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