Maxwell School News and Commentary

Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science, says one of the biggest reasons for the changing relationship is that [Pope] Francis and other key decision-makers were members of religious congregations themselves. "I think that made a big difference," she says.

“The Chilean Christians for Socialism Movement: Liberationist, Third Worldist, and Utopian,” written by Assistant Professor of History Denisa Jashari, was published in Latin American Research Review.

"Did Gender Egalitarianism Weaken Religiosity in Baby Boom Women? A Developmental-Historical Approach," co-authored by Professor of Sociology Merril Silverstein, was published in Sociology of Religion.

"One initial impetus for the book was my desire to bring geography’s concepts and insights into better conversation with topics in Middle East area studies," says Timur Hammond, assistant professor of geography and the environment. "Although over a decade has passed since I started research on this topic, expanding the disciplinary connections between geography and Middle East area studies continues to be a core goal."

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.”

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.

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). 

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.

"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.

"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.