Michael J. Altman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. He holds a Ph.D. in American Religious Cultures from Emory University.

"A compelling example of how critical scholarship in religious studies can be applied in studies of American cultural and religious history... I can imagine this book, or any of its individual chapters, working well in undergraduate and graduate courses on American religion, religion and Orientalism, or critical approaches to religious studies, to name only a few." --Society for US Intellectual History

"Altman successfully disrupts and expands the typical narrative about Hinduism in America by carefully documenting encounters with South Asian religious practices, objects, and texts. He also precisely details how notions of America as a white Protestant democracy and chosen nation were formed against representations of India as dark, uncivilized, and despotic. Altman's book is well-researched, well-organized, and well-written. His argument showing how Americans constructed their identity and religion through differences and similarities with an imagined Other is compelling and insightful. He makes a valuable contribution to academic discourse and public conversation about Hinduism in the American religious landscape."--Patrick Horn, American Vedantist

"This book is a valuable contribution to the larger 'What is 'Hinduism'?' question that persists in religious studies. But rather than focusing on the role of European colonialism in the formation of a stable '-ism,' Altman focuses on the US: the literature, and the propagation/replication of particular Orientalist tropes that in turn reified American Protestantism and nationalist identities. The genealogy is thorough and detailed. While such discussions typically focus on the European Orientalists such as Mill, Mueller, or Macauley, tracing the discourse through American writers is both refreshing and insightful."-Juli L. Gittinger, Reading Religion

"In this illuminating history, Michael Altman gathers the fragmentary representations that Americans used to construct their initial understandings of India and Hindu religious traditions. Long before the World's Parliament of Religions in 1893, Americans were encountering South Asian religious practices, objects, and texts in missionary reports, encyclopedic compendia, museum collections, travel accounts, and school textbooks. Immersed in that multiplicity, Altman deftly shows how and why 'Hinduism' became conceivable."--Leigh Eric Schmidt, Edward C. Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor, Washington University in St. Louis

"Michael Altman's Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu revolutionizes how we think about the history of Hinduism in American culture. Avoiding the usual anachronisms, essentialisms, and orientalisms, Altman analyzes an ever-shifting discourse fashioned from fragments and bearing many labels. He carefully documents the genealogies of those terms and shows to what ends they were put, from how they shaped American conceptions of religion itself to how Americans imagined their own religious identities."--Andrea R. Jain, author of Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture

"This book fills a gaping hole in the historicization of 18th and 19th century 'Hinduism' in United States by revealing in meticulous detail how white Protestant racism, imperialism, and imaginings of exotic India helped construct its antecedent categories of 'heathen' and 'Hindoo.' Altman's adroit theoretical analysis shifts the discourse to consider how representations of exotic others inform debates within American Protestantism and the formation of American Protestant nationalism - not to mention the category of religion." --Amanda Lucia, author of Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace

"Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu also contributes to a growing body of literature in American religion that has criticized the narrative of American religious history as one of ever-increasing pluralism, with particular attention to how the category of religion functions to manage difference ... Beyond its contributions to the fields of American religion and Religious Studies, I can imagine this book, or any of its individual chapters, working well in undergraduate and graduate courses on American religion, religion and Orientalism, or critical approaches to religious studies, to name only a few." -- Society for U.S. Intellectual History