Manuel A. Vásquez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. His dissertation and first book, The Brazilian Popular Church and the Crisis of Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 1998), explored the effects of democratization and late capitalism on grassroots progressive Catholicism in Brazil. The book received the 1998 award for excellence in the analytical-descriptive study of religion from the American Academy of Religion. His most recent publications include Globalizing the Sacred: Religion Across the Americas (Rutgers University Press, 2003), which he co-authored with Marie Friedmann Marquardt; Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life in America (AltaMira, 2005), co-edited with Karen Leonard, Alex Stepick, and Jennifer Holdaway; Latin American Religions: Histories and Documents in Context (New York University Press, 2008), co-edited with Anna Peterson; and A Place to Be: Brazilian, Guatemalan, and Mexican Immigrants in Florida’s New Destinations (Rutgers University Press, forthcoming), co-edited with Philip Williams and Timothy Steigenga.