Peter manseau biography

American writer, religion scholar and museum curator

Peter Manseau is an American writer, religion scholar and museum curator. He is Lilly Endowment Curator of American Religious History at the National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian.

Early life

Manseau attended college at the University of Massachusetts, then earned his master's degree and doctorate from Georgetown University.^[1]

Career

Writing in The National Interest, Ivan Plis describes Manseau as an "unusual man for the job" at National Museum of American History, contrasting Manseau's webzine Killing the Buddha, a self-described “religion magazine for people made anxious by churches,” and what Plis describes as Manseau's attraction "to the bizarre and sometimes discomforting ways in which religion makes us behave", with the museum's "musty reputation as 'America’s attic.'”^[2] Manseau's 2017 illustrated collection Objects of Devotion: Religion in Early America,