Spiritual Politics/The Politics of Spirituality Workshop

An interdisciplinary group of scholars convened to discuss the intersections of the spiritual and the political, looking in particular at specific sites and issues in which political contention and discourses of the spiritual are closely conjoined, such as ecology, health and medicine, sexuality, and civil religion. Conversation centered on ten papers presented over the course of the workshop, which addressed themes ranging from transnational Evangelical and Pentecostal movements and associations to the politics of sex in Western Europe and the United States, and from medicine and healing to ecological activism and the governmental production of spirituality in state parks.

Workshop Participants:

Courtney Bender, Columbia University

Carolyn E. Chen, Northwestern University

William E. Connolly, Johns Hopkins University

Thomas J. Csordas, University of California, San Diego

Katherine Pratt Ewing, University of Wisconsin, Madison

David Kyuman Kim, Connecticut College

Pamela E. Klassen, University of Toronto

Paul Lichterman, University of Southern California

Kathryn Lofton, Yale University

Elizabeth McAlister, Wesleyan University

Melani McAlister, George Washington University

Omar M. McRoberts, University of Chicago

Kerry Mitchell, Long Island University

John Lardas Modern, Franklin and Marshall College

Daniel H. Nexon, Georgetown University

Ann Pellegrini, New York University

Laura R. Olson, Clemson University

Bron Taylor, University of Florida

Manuel A. Vásquez, University of Florida

Melissa Wilcox, Whitman College

Social Science Research Council
Brooklyn, NY
September 24-25, 2010