Rachel Wagner is Assistant Professor of Religion in the Department of Philosophy and Religion.  Rachel's work centers on the study of religion and culture, including especially religion and film and religion and virtual reality.  Rachel has published work dealing with the issue of virtual habitation in online worlds as a form of ritual enactment; the problem of narrativity and interactivity in religiously-based video games, and the interpretive issues that arise when sacred texts become hypertextual, contested, and sometimes radically transformed as online documents.  Rachel serves on the steering committee of the American Academy of Religion's Religion and Popular Culture group, and is co-chair of the Religion, Film, and Visual Arts group.  Most recently, she had chapters published on religion and virtual reality in Halos and Avatars: Playing Games with God, ed. Craig Detweiler (Westminster John Knox Press, 2010) and the second edition of God in the Details, ed. Michael Mazur and Kate McCarthy (Routledge, 2010).  Currently, Rachel is at work on a single-author book on the implications of the intersection between religious studies and virtual reality entitled Godwired: Religion, Ritual and Virtual Reality (Routledge, expected 2011).  Short pieces relating to this research project can be found in Religion Dispatches and in the Society of Biblical Literature Forum.  Rachel also teaches courses on: women and religion; New Testament; and the history of Christianity.