Professor of Religion and Chair of the Department of Religion at Illinois Wesleyan University.

Professor Myscofski currently teaches courses on Myth and Ritual, Women and Religions, Religion and Magic, Native American and African Religions, Latin American Religions, and Cults in America.  She was honored in 2001 as the recipient of the Dupont Award for Teaching Excellence.

Professor Myscofski received her A.B. in the History and Philosophy of Religion, A.M. at the Divinity School, and Ph.D. in History of Religions, all at the University of Chicago.  Before coming to IWU in 1991, she taught at Loyola University in Chicago and the University of Missouri at Columbia.  Her publications include When Men Walk Dry: The Portuguese Messianic Tradition in Brazil and a series of articles on women and religion in colonial Brazil focused on marriage and sexuality, women and magic, and women's confessions to the Brazilian Inquisition.  For her archival research, she traveled to Brazil in 1979-80, and again 1990 and 2005.  Her current projects center on paradigms for women’s religious lives in colonial Brazil, and women’s magic in the later colonial period.

Active in her professional organization--the American Academy of Religion (AAR)--Professor Myscofski has been vice-president and president of the Midwest Regional AAR, and Editor of the AAR Academy Series for books published in conjunction with Oxford University Press. She also served as the Editor for New Religions, one of 10 Area Editors, for the HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion (1995), a project sponsored by the AAR.

> Professor Myscofski's publications and presentations