Maxwell School News and Faculty Media, Opinion and Analysis

Kurien Quoted in Texas Standard Article on Immigrant Churches in Diaspora Network, US Church Growth

Prema Kurien, professor of sociology, says there is a logical reason why immigrant groups exhibit higher rates of religiosity. “Immigration and relocation from a familiar context to something completely unfamiliar is a theologizing experience,” Kurien says. “It raises existential questions—things that people don’t think about when they are in their home country with a familiar community.”

September 14, 2023

See related: Religion, U.S. Immigration, United States

Silverstein Weighs In on America’s Religious Shift in New York Times Article

One of the main qualifications people seem to be looking for in their new spiritual communities is something that is less exclusionary than the denominations they were raised in. But it’s precisely the more “dogmatic” denominations and religious sects that are better able to keep adherents, says Merril Silverstein, professor of sociology.

July 5, 2023

See related: Religion, United States

Hammond Provides Insight into the Geographies of Islam in New Book

Timur Hammond

Timur Hammond, assistant professor of geography and the environment, has written “Placing Islam: Geographies of Connection in Twentieth-Century Istanbul” (University of California Press, 2023).

March 20, 2023

See related: Middle East & North Africa, Religion

Bhan Documents Growing Critical Kashmir Studies Scholarship in New Book

Mona Bhan, Haley Duschinski, Deepti Misri

This handbook, co-edited by Mona Bhan, associate professor of anthropology and Ford-Maxwell Professor of South Asian Studies, politicizes discourses of nationalism, patriotism, democracy, and liberalism, and it questions how these dominant globalist imaginaries and discourses serve institutionalized power, create hegemony, and normalize domination.

October 7, 2022

See related: Religion, South Asia

Hammond Examines the Relationship Between Artistic Practice and Religious Devotion in New Study

Timur Hammond

"Conjunctions of Islam: rethinking the geographies of art and piety through the notebooks of Ahmet Süheyl Ünver," authored by Assistant Professor Timur Hammond, was published in Cultural Geographies.

September 13, 2022

Brockway Discusses the Need for a Framework to Describe the Far-Right in NBC News Piece

"January 6, Trump and the rise of America's dangerous 'shadow gospel'," co-authored by Mark Brockway, a faculty fellow in political science, was published by NBC News.

July 22, 2022

Thompson Reviews New Book on History of Black Catholic Nuns in Global Sisters Report

Associate Professor Margaret Susan Thompson reviewed a new book by Shannen Dee Williams titled "Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle" in Global Sisters Report.

May 19, 2022

See related: Black, Religion, United States

Thompson Quoted in Times Union Article on Religious Exemptions for Vaccines

Whether the religious belief is "sincerely held" is a primary metric used by employers when determining whether to grant the requests, says Thompson, associate professor of history and political science.

October 8, 2021

See related: COVID-19, Religion, United States