Michael E. Heyes, Ph.D.
A Researcher investigating Ideas of the Demonic and perceptions of the "Outsider" from the Medieval to the Modern.
I am Associate Professor and Chair of the Religion department at Lycoming College in Williamsport, PA. As is often the case at a small liberal arts college, my teaching is spread across a wide variety of topics in my discipline in order to respond to student needs.
In any given semester, I can be found teaching courses with titles as varied as What Is Religion?; Conspiracy Theories; Religion and Culture in Japanese Animation; Religion and Film; and Medieval Women's Religious Literature. Writing and research skills tend to be emphasized in all of my classes, and the curriculum culminates in REL 447: Research in Religion, a course in which students design and carry out their own research agenda in the field.
Broadly speaking, my research interests are in the various ways that people have "Othered" those outside of their own groups from medieval Europe to modern America. That is, people have a marked tendency to separate themselves into in-groups and out-groups. Traits that aren't shared between the two groups are often held up by the in-group as an example of what makes the two fundamentally different. Over time, those traits can be emphasized and the difference enhanced to such a degree that the in-group begins to see the out-group as less than human, even monstrous or demonic.
If you're interested in this process, I have an older video at the left which explores the concept more.
My interest in the the Other largely began with my advanced degrees. I received my MA in Comparative Religion from the University of Washington (2008) and my Ph.D. from Rice University (2015). My dissertation explored the opponents of Saints' Lives literature in medieval England and their monstrous and demonic representations. That became the foundation for my first scholarly book, Margaret's Monsters: Women, Identity, and the Life of St. Margaret in Medieval England (Routledge 2019). A conference that I and several other graduate students developed surrounding this and other topics also became an edited volume entitled Holy Monsters, Sacred Grotesques: Monstrosity and Religion in Europe and the United States (Lexington Books 2018).
Partially due to my interest in contemporary film, I began to research contemporary expressions of the demonic, particularly as conspiracy and film intersected. That became the book Demons in the USA: From the Anti-Spiritualists to QAnon (Routledge 2024).
I can't say I ever expected to engage in public scholarship, but that changed when I attended the 2024 Courage Tour session in Monroeville, PA. I had heard that there were some people who had wed the demonic and the political together, and it sounded a lot like the research I had done for the last chapter of Demons in the USA. I thought it could be an interesting chapter for a new book.
When then Vice Presidential Candidate J.D. Vance showed up at the session, I was very surprised. The political clout of this group must be beyond what I had previously seen, and the rhetoric at the meeting was as galvanizing to the crowd as it was disturbing to me. I started to write about what I had seen and the kind of Othering that this group was doing for publications like The Conversation and Religion Dispatches. Eventually, that led to Devils of Democracy with Broadleaf Books.
Contact Michael E. Heyes
Whether you're a reader with a question, a media representative, or a fellow scholar looking to collaborate, I'd love to hear from you.