Professor Matthew Cressler was born in Connecticut and raised in Auburn, Alabama. He earned a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Northwestern University in Chicago, his M.T.S. in Religions of the Americas from Harvard Divinity School in Boston, and a B.A. in History and Theology from St. Bonaventure University in New York. Currently, he is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the College of Charleston and specializes in African American Religious History and Catholic History in the United States. As a teacher who teaches about African American religion as well as race, religion, and politics in the United States at a school located in the South, Professor Cressler tries to teach his classes in ways that connect those subjects to Charleston specifically. He incorporates the history of religion and enslavement as well as the origins of African American religion in South Carolina into his courses in order to root the subjects he teaches in the local community. Although Professor Cressler has a professional connection to the South, he also has a personal connection rooting back to his childhood. Aside from growing up in Alabama, Cressler was raised by an Italian American Mother from New York and a southern father, making him, as he says, “a northern southerner or a southern northerner I guess”. He still feels as if he has a deep personal connection to the South but has an outsider perspective as well because of his mother and the fact that he has spent most of his adult life in the North. Currently, Professor Cressler’s research is centered on white Catholic racism which focuses on how historically white Catholics fought against efforts to integrate schools and public accommodations, ultimately supporting racism in America over the 20th century.