Rate My Professor Carole Cusack

Carole Cusack is Professor of Religious Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney, within the Discipline of Studies in Religion. She completed her Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Religious Studies at the University of Sydney in 1986. Cusack earned her PhD from the same institution in 1996; her thesis, titled 'An Examination of the Process of Conversion Among the Germanic Peoples in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages,' was published as Conversion Among the Germanic Peoples by Cassell in 1998. She also holds a Master of Education in Educational Psychology, awarded by the University of Sydney in 2001. Her academic career at the University of Sydney began in 1989 as a lecturer in religious studies. She became full-time in Studies in Religion in 1996 and was appointed full Professor in January 2013.

Cusack specializes in new religious movements, contemporary religious trends, religious conversion, European mythology, western esotericism, pilgrimage and tourism, modern Pagan religions, and religion and popular culture. Since the late 1990s, she has taught on contemporary religious trends. Among her key publications are Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (Ashgate, 2010; over 400 citations), The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), Anime, Religion and Spirituality: Profane and Sacred Worlds in Contemporary Japan (Equinox, 2015, co-authored with Katharine Buljan), Charmed Circle: Stonehenge, Contemporary Paganism, and Alternative Archaeology (Numen, 2012), The Rise of Christianity in Northern Europe, 300-1000 (Cassell, 1999), and Play, Narrative and the Creation of Religion: Extending the Theoretical Base of 'Invented Religions' (Culture and Religion, 2013). She has edited volumes including Sacred Suicide (Ashgate, 2014, with James R. Lewis) and serves as editor of Literature & Aesthetics and Sydney Studies in Religion. Cusack received the University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research Supervision in 2010. Her scholarship has profoundly influenced the study of invented religions, the role of fiction in religious formation, and modern spiritual landscapes.