Katharine L. Wiegele Adjunct Assistant Professor Dept. of Anthropology wiegele@niu.edu

            Graduating with a B.A. in English and Rhetoric from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I knew I wanted to write, but about what?  With some international experience already, and an intense curiosity about how the people of the rest of the world lived and thought, I joined the U.S. Peace Corps and was sent to a small coastal town in Pangasinan, Philippines.  I lived there for two years, trained high school English teachers, and learned Ilokano language as well as I could.  In July 1990, three months before the end of my service, all of us volunteers were emergency evacuated back to the U.S. due to the ongoing tense peace and order situation and the kidnapping of a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer. The realities of American neocolonialism and the complexities of Filipino national identity that contributed to this situation altered my view of myself and my country, and continue to intrigue me today. 

            Despite the sometimes tense political situation (and a brief brush with death of my own), my affection for the people, food, culture, and natural beauty of the country had grown gradually but deeply.  Discovering that graduate study in anthropology would take me back to the Philippines and also allow me to write, I pursued an M.A. (at NIU) and a Ph.D. (at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign) in sociocultural anthropology, which indeed involved several more trips for language study (Tagalog language) and fieldwork (Batangas and Metro Manila). 

            Early on, I was impressed by the vitality of the religious scene in this so-called “Catholic country” where people’s passions lie just below a placid surface.  The mere mention of charismatic or Pentecostal Christianity, for example, would often produce immediate warm smiles and faces animated by stories of life transformations.  I felt that I had put my finger on one of the strong arteries in the pulse of contemporary Filipino culture.  In order to understand this major current in the religious scene, in 1996-97 I lived in a semi-squatter neighborhood in Manila among devotees of many of the charismatic and Pentecostal groups.  I focused on El Shaddai, a popular Catholic charismatic group with a prominent prosperity theology.  In 2005 I published Investing in Miracles, a book about El Shaddai followers that is based on my dissertation.  The fieldwork was funded by Fulbright Hayes, Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and a Nelle Signore grant from International Studies at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.  I aimed primarily to understand the motivations that lie beneath the spiritual and lifestyle choices people make, as well as the implications of these choices on their understanding and experience of poverty and upward mobility.

            I also have some brief experience doing fieldwork among Korean-American Christian college students.  In 2005 I participated in the Global Pentecostalism and Filipino Charismatic Christianity conference at the Institute of Philippine Culture, Ateneo de Manila University.  I am currently an adjunct professor in Anthropology.   I teach Anthropology and Human Diversity, and occasionally Introduction to Cultural Anthropology.

Vita