Religious Studies Colloquium

The Mormon Giant: A Live Documentary About Religion and Wrestling

Dr. David Walker, University of California, Santa Barbara

Wednesday, April 8, 2026 at 4 PM

KUC Theater

The Mormon Giant A live documentary about religion and wrestling   The Mormon Giant explores the relationship between religion and professional wrestling in the twentieth century. Focusing on wrestlers with Mormon “gimmicks,” the film shows how they presented as “heels” (villains) or “faces” (heroes) in auditoriums throughout North America and abroad, and how such representations proved usable (or not) to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints writ large. The Mormon Giant narrates the “face-turn” of Mormonism in twentieth-century American popular culture, while showing also how religion and wrestling generally work together—how they shape and reflect each other—in the modern world.

Flyer for David Walker – RS Colloquium

Colloquia from the Past

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Benjamin Zeller, Lake Forest College	Why UFO Religions Matter	27 Feb 2025	Student Union 220
Jeremy Posadas, Stetson University	Capitalism as a Moral Code	15 Feb 2024	Academic Classroom Building 106
Atalia Omer, University of Notre Dame	When is Jewish Palestine Solidarity also Queer and Feminist?	31 Oct 2024	Student Union 224
Anand Vivek Taneja, Vanderbilt University	Jinnealogy, Poetry, and Inter-Species Intimacy: More-than-Human Memory and Muslim Ecological Thought	26 Oct 2023	Student Union 220
Hafsa Kanjwal, Lafayette College	The Crisis in Kashmir	24 Feb 2020	Student Union 206
Rhiannon Graybill, Rhodes College	Fuzzy, Messy, Icky: The Edges of Consent in Bbllical Rape Narratives and Rape Culture	19 Mar 2019	Student Union 201
Caleb Iyer Elfenbein, Grinnell College	Fear in Your Heart: What Islamophobia can tell us about Public Life in Today’s America	19 Sep 2019	BAS S102
Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh, Vanderbilt University	Female Captive to Negro Wench: Slavery in Religious and Gendered Perspective	10 Apr 2018	Student Union 201
Brett Esaki, University of Arizona	Legacy of Dominance in Japanese-American Monuments	14 Sep 2018	Hazlewood Dining Room, JUB
Ralph Hood, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga	Psychology and Religious Studies: William James and the Unrealized Conversation	1 Dec 2017	Hazlewood Dining Room, JUB