Cody Musselman

Cody Musselman is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She received her Ph.D. in Religious studies from Yale University, where she focused on American religious history and Anthropology. She also has an MTS from Harvard Divinity School and a BA from Kalamazoo College. Her research and teaching focus broadly on religion in cultures of American embodiment, such as sport, fitness, health, and wellness.

Musselman is currently completing her first book manuscript, Spiritual Exercises: Fitness and Religion in Modern America, which examines the religion of American fitness culture. As a scholar of religion in American popular culture, she has also written and published about cult-marketing, fitness and Christian Nationalism, civil religion and witness trees at Gettysburg National Military Park, and vernacular shrines in Aspen, Colorado. Other research interests include religion in multi-level-marketing, parody and religion, and the history of shifting attitudes around pregnancy in sport and fitness.

Before coming to Notre Dame, Musselman was a postdoctoral fellow at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, and taught at Amherst College and Harvard University. Musselman also serves as the “Current Issues” editor for the International Journal of Sport & Religion.