Tamira is a second year Masters of Theological Studies candidate at Harvard Divinity School with a focus on Religions of the Americas. Her work engages contemporary varieties of American Christianity, theory and method in the study of religion, new religious movements, and the intersection of religion and media. Deeply interested in syncretism within religions, recent work has examined the use of the Jewish Passover by popular Prosperity Gospel preachers, a comparison study of Amish and Muslim head coverings, and new developments surrounding the Nation of Islam and Scientology. Additional work has focused on the mediatization of the Shroud of Turin, pragmatism and religion, and liberation theology.
Tamira's work engages with and relies heavily upon post-structuralist, feminist, and Marxist theories, with specific regards to Michel Foucault, Patricia Hill Collins, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Pierre Bourdieu, and Jürgen Habermas, as well as historians of religion Bruce Lincoln, Jonathan Z. Smith, and Russeull McCutcheon.
Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Tamira received her B.A. (magna cum laude with research distinction) from The Ohio State University in 2013 in religious studies with a minor in sociology. Her senior research thesis, "The Problem of Hell: Historical Revisionism in the Evangelical Christian Movement" examined discourse surrounding American Evangelical theologies of hell in regards to both personal and group identities. Tamira was the the recipient of the Marilyn R. Waldman Award for best essay by an undergraduate in 2013 for her essay "Media Discourse and the Shroud of Turin" which examines the Catholic relic as a mediated object of religious significance and belief.
Recently, Tamira has presented on this work at McGill University, as well as published an essay on the Amish and Muslim head covering in the Harvard Divinity School graduate student journal "Cult/ure". She is currently writing for the Harvard Divinity School's Science, Religion, and Culture's online magazine "Cosmologics" on the relationship between the Nation of Islam and Scientology. In her studies at Harvard Divinity School, Tamira has also examined the revelatory experiences of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the relationship between mediatization and expressions of faith by American corporations and public figures, and the history of modern Christian theology.