Kellan Klaus

Dissertation Title: “Historicities of the Dislocated Soul: Suffering, Struggle, and Salvation among Internally Displaced Greek Orthodox Cypriots”

Kellan Klaus is a PhD candidate in Anthropology and Sociology of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His dissertation project explores the spiritual lives of Greek Orthodox Christians on the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus who were internally displaced following the 1974 Greek-Greek Cypriot coup d’état and Turkish military intervention. Through ethnographic research, he examines how forced displacement and the island's ongoing division shape his interlocutors’ moral sensibilities and their efforts to endure the dislocated present piously.

Kellan’s research has been supported by the Fulbright US Student Program (Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship), the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (The Helena Wylde Swiny and Stuart Swiny Fellowship), the Divinity School (Anthony C. Yu Doctoral Student Fellowship), the Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts (Innovation Fund grants), and the US Department of Education (Foreign Languages and Area Studies fellowships). Kellan previously earned an MA from The University of Chicago Divinity School and is an alumnus of Centenary College of Louisiana, where he earned a BA in Religious Studies with a minor in Sociology.

Interests: Anthropology of Religion, Anthropology of Christianity, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Hellenism, Cyprus, embodiment and bodily practice, temporality, historicity, sensation and perception, discursive tradition, religion and the secular, theology and anthropology, diaspora studies, the uncanny, pain and agency, ethics and politics