Jill DeTemple

Dr. Jill DeTemple is Chair of Religious Studies, Professor of Religious Studies, and, by courtesy, Professor of Anthropology. Her research focuses on religiously sponsored development in Latin America and on the uses of dialogue for teaching in higher education. She is the author of two books that explore religion and development in Ecuador: Cement, Earthworms and Cheese Factories: Religion and Community Development in Rural Ecuador (University of Notre Dame Press, 2012) and Making Market Women: Gender, Religion, and Work in Ecuador (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020). She is currently co-authoring a book, The Dialogic Classroom in Higher Education: Listening for Engagement and Deep Learning that introduces Reflective Structured Dialogue and attendant approaches to dialogic classrooms in postsecondary contexts (Taylor & Francis, 2025).  

Courses Taught

• Religious Literacy
• Problems in the Philosophy of Religion
• Social Scientific Approaches to the Study of Religion
• Identity and the Sacred in the Southwest
• Religion, Gender, and International Economic Development
• Core Seminars in the Modern Study of Religion and Contemporary Study of Religion

Recent Publications

“Reorientation: Teaching Theory and Method to Future Faculty” in Teaching Critical Religious Studies. Jenna Gray-Hildenbrand, Beverley McGuire and Hussein Rashid, eds. (Bloomsbury, 2023).

“The Spaces We Make: Dialogic Classrooms and Social Transformation.” Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution. 2020 (Vol. 35, No 5).

Making Market Women: Gender, Religion, and Work in Ecuador. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020.

“A Conversation with American Academy of Religion Award for Teaching Excellence Winner Jill DeTemple.” Teaching Theology and Religion. July 2019. (Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 223-234). https://doi.org/10.1111/teth.12490

With John Sarrouf. “Disruption, Dialog, and Swerve: Reflective Structured Dialog in Religious Studies Classrooms.” Teaching Theology and Religion. July 2017 (Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 282-291). https://doi.org/10.1111/teth.12398

“Inca Roads, Protestant Hospitals, Catholic Cheese, and the Fluctuating State: Religion and Development in Ecuador.” The Routledge Handbook of Religions and Global Development. Emma Tomalin, ed. 2015 (Oxford: Routledge, pp. 156-166).

“Imagining Development: Religious Studies in the Context of International Economic
Development.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion. March 2013. (Vol. 80, No. 1, 107-129).

Distinctions

DeTemple’s research has been supported by the John Templeton Foundation, the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, the American Academy of Religion, the Tinker Foundation, and the General Board for Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church. She is the winner of the 2018 Award for Teaching Excellence from the American Academy of Religion.