Maria José de Abreu is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. Her work engages with a range of anthropological, philosophical and literary debates about religion, personhood, the human senses and their technological extensions. Special focus is given to logics and grammars of the political in current neoliberal governance. Her first book project “The Charismatic Gymnasium: breath, media and religious revivalism in contemporary Brazil” centers on the role of pneuma (the Greek term for air, breath or spirit) in articulating a form of Catholic revivalism to neoliberal flows through the athletic elasticity of spirit. A second project in progress is dedicated to thinking impasse as a condition intrinsic, though not exclusive, to neoliberal governance. Focusing on Portugal during and after the 2008 financial crisis, this second project is an attempt at theorizing from spaces of tension, semantic fog, performative paradox and cynical reasoning, in ways that make decision-though not governance- difficult or impossible. Her academic articles have appeared in Current Anthropology, Critical Inquiry, Social Text, Anthropological Theory, Social Analysis, Scapegoat: Journal of Architecture, Landscape and Political Economy, Etnofoor, Journal of Culture and Religion, Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories and Contemporary Contexts, Cultural Anthropology and Qui-Parle? Her ethnographic work has been supported by Foundation for Science and Technology Lisbon, Forum for Transregional Studies, Berlin, ICI-Berlin, and Rework: Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History, at Humboldt University in Berlin. She also serves on the editorial board of Public Culture.