Architectural rendering of new IUPUI Campus Center

The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture is a research and public outreach institute devoted to the promotion of the understanding of the relation between religion and other features of American culture. Established in 1989, the Center is based in the IU School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Now with forty research fellows, the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture is considered the premier research institute in the nation working in American religious studies.

Center Programs, Activities, and Publications

Center activities include national conferences and symposia, books, essays, bibliographies and research projects, fellowships for young scholars, data-based communication about developments in the field of American religion, a newsletter devoted to the promotion of Center activities, and the semiannual scholarly periodical Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, which is among the highest-ranked academic journals in the nation.

Since its founding, the Center has influenced the field of American religious studies in multiple ways. On an academic level, it led the way in understanding religious pluralism with national conferences that “de-centered” religion. By placing Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and non-mainstream beliefs, behaviors, and rituals together in fashioning an analysis of American religion, the Center helped to increase scholarly and public understandings of the diversity of the American religious experience and established entirely new views from which to study religion in America.

As a public teaching venue, the Center for the Study of Religion and American culture has been unmatched by any other for nearly two decades. Journalists around the globe consistently turn to its officers for their insights about events in the United States. Print, radio, and television journalists interview the Center’s officers and research fellows hundreds of times annually. With seminars for young college, university, and seminary professors, the Center promotes better research and teaching about American religion by faculty. These sessions result in increased awareness and understanding of the diversity of American religious life and the manifold forms in which religion reveals itself in culture (and culture in religion) for thousands of students across the country.

Young Scholars in American Religion 2009-2011—Call for Applications

The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at IUPUI announces a program for early career scholars in American Religion. Beginning in April 2009, a series of seminars devoted to the enhancement of teaching and research for younger scholars in American Religion will be offered in Indianapolis. The aims of all sessions of the program are to develop ideas and methods of instruction in a supportive workshop environment, stimulate scholarly research and writing, and create a community of scholars that will continue into the future.

Dates:

Session I: April 2-5, 2009
Session II: October 15-18, 2009
Session III: April 15-18, 2010
Session IV: October 14-17, 2010
Session V: April 28-May 1, 2011

Seminar Leaders:

W. Clark Gilpin is the Margaret E. Burton Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Christianity and Theology in the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is a historian of Christianity who studies the cultural history of theology in England and America since the seventeenth century. Among his works is an intellectual biography of Roger Williams, the seventeenth-century advocate of religious liberty. A more recent book, A Preface to Theology, examines the history of American theological scholarship in terms of the theologian’s responsibilities to a three-fold public in the churches, the academic community, and civil society.

Tracy Fessenden is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University, specializing in western religious traditions, religion and literature, and American religious and cultural history. Her recent work focuses on religion, race, gender, and sexuality in American cultural history, on the relationship between religion and the secular in American public life, and on questions of religion and violence. She is author, most recently, of Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature.

Eligibility: Scholars eligible to apply are those who have launched their careers within the last seven years and who are working in a subfield of the area of religion in North America, broadly understood. Ten scholars will be selected, with the understanding that they will commit to the program for all dates. Each participant will be expected to produce a course syllabus, with justification of teaching approach, and a publishable research article. All costs for transportation, lodging, and meals for the seminars will be covered, and there is no application fee.

To Apply: Applicants must submit a curriculum vitae with three letters of reference directly supporting their application to the program (do not send portfolios with generic reference letters) as well as a 500-word essay indicating 1) why they are interested in participating, and 2) their current and projected research and teaching interests. The deadline for applications is 15 October 2008. Essays, CVs, and letters of reference should be sent to:

Director
Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, IUPUI
Cavanaugh Hall 417
425 University Boulevard
Indianapolis, IN 46202-5140

Grant Wacker to speak at IUPUI

Grant Wacker, Professor of Church History at Duke Divinity School, will visit the Center in September and deliver a lecture entitled “Exporting the Soul of Dixie: Billy Graham and the Expansion of Southern Culture.”

The lecture is slated for 10:00 a.m., Friday, September 12, 2008, in Room 309 of the IUPUI Campus Center, 420 University Blvd., Indianapolis, IN. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Dr. Wacker is the co-editor or author of six books, including Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture. He is working on an interpretive survey of religion in United States history with Randall Balmer and Harry S. Stout, to be published by Oxford University Press, and a cultural biography to be titled Billy Graham and the American Moment. He is current president of the American Society of Church History and has served as a senior editor of the quarterly journal, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture.

CSRAC named Signature Center

The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture is pleased to announce that it has been named a Signature Center of IUPUI. The Signature Center designation, new to IUPUI, is based upon several criteria, including research strength, academic distinction, and scholarly record of faculty investigators.