Updated CV Here
EDUCATION
2016 Ph.D., American Religious History, Drew University
Thesis: “Norman Lear and the Spiritual Politics of Religious Liberalism”
Examination Fields: 1) Pre-1865 American Religion, 2) Post-1865 American Religion, 3) Critical Theory, Religion, and the Culture Industry, 4) The Culture Wars
2010 M.A.R., History of Christianity, Yale Divinity School
2008 M.A., American Religion and Politics, Claremont School of Theology
Thesis: “Scaling the Wall: Two Presidents on Religion and Politics
2006 B.A., Arizona State University, Barrett Honors College
summa cum laude, Religious Studies and History
PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS
2018 - 2019 Monmouth University, Department of History and Anthropology, Adjunct
2018 - 2019 Lehigh University, Department of Religion Studies, Research Fellow
2019 Rutgers University, Department of Religious Studies, Part-Time Lecturer
PUBLICATIONS
Books
2019 The Rise and Fall of the Religious Left: Politics, Television, and Popular Culture in the 1970s and Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press)
Refereed Journal Articles
2017 “Religion, Genealogy, and the Study of US American Religions,” Bulletin for the Study of Religion. Available here: http://journals.equinoxpub.com/BSOR/article/view/35681
2012 “Review Essay: Charles H. Long and the Re-Orientation of American Religious History,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80:3 (July).
2011 “Bishop Lamont and the Hermeneutics of Play: Hip Hop, Religion, and the Study of American Religious History,” Bulletin for the Study of Religion 40:3 (September).
2011 “Edwards and the Enlightenment: Mapping the Secular within the Covenanted Community,” REA: Religion, Education, and the Arts 7 (Spring). Available here: http://rea.materdei.ie/pages/journal-issues/issue-7.php
Book Chapters
2018 Invited. “Charles H. Long,” in Palgrave Handbook of Radical Theologies, edited by Christopher Rodkey and Jordan Miller (New York: Palgrave MacMillan).
Peer-Reviewed Encyclopedia Entries
2019 "The 1970s" (10,000 words) in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, Jon Butler, ed. forthcoming
Encyclopedia Entries
2018 “The Chronic” (1500 words), “Producers/Beatmakers” (1500 words), “Culture Wars” (2500 words) in St. James Encyclopedia in Hip Hop Culture, Thomas Riggs, ed. (Farmingdale, MI: Gale Publishing, 2018). [commissioned]
Manuscripts in Progress
Inventing the Christian Right: A Religious History of the Public Square
Book Reviews
2019 Charles Long, Ellipsis...The Collected Writings of Charles H. Long (New York: Bloomsbury). Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion forthcoming [by invitation]. Available here: http://readingreligion.org/books/ellipsis
2018 Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer, Fault Lines: A History of of the United States since 1974 (New York: W.W. Norton). Los Angeles Review of Books. Available here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/polarization-usa/
2018 Emily Johnson, This is Our Message: Women’s Leadership in the New Christian Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion. Available here: http://readingreligion.org/books/our-message
2018 Martha Nussbaum, The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at our Political Crisis (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018). Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion. (August). Available here: http://readingreligion.org/books/monarchy-fear
2018 Robert Wuthnow, The Left Behind: Decline and Anger in Rural America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018). Essay. “Considering the Rural in American Public Life,” Los Angeles Review of Books (May 9th). Available here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/little-guy-america/
2017 Kathryn Lofton, Consuming Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Review Essay. “Theory and Practice in a Time of Precarity: Consuming Religion as the Study of Religion,” H-AmRel, H-Net Reviews (November).
2017 Mark Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2017). Review Essay. “Liberalism, Mass Media, and the Anatomy of American Cultural Warfare,” Sacred Matters (September).
2017 David Watt, Antifundamentalism in Modern America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017). Review Essay. “Religion, Antifundamentalism, and the Study of American Religious History,” H-AmRel, H-Net Reviews (July).
2016 Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, A Journey to the Heart of Our Political Divide (New York: The New Press, 2016). Review Essay. “Religion, Conservatism, and American Public Life: 2016,” Marginalia Review of Books (November).
2016 E.J. Dionne, Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism—from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2016). Review Essay. "Religion, Conservatism, and the Fundamentalization of the GOP," H-AmRel, H-Net Reviews (January).
2016 Finbarr Curtis, The Production of American Religious Freedom (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2016). Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion. Available here: http://readingreligion.org/books/production-american- religious-freedom
2016 Stephen Prothero, Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars, But Continue to Lose Elections: The Battles That Define America from Jefferson's Heresies to Gay Marriage (New York: Harper Collins, 2016). Review Essay. “Wall Street Goes to War: Hardhat Politics and the Culture War of Everything since the 1960s,” Marginalia Review of Books (February).
2015 Monica Miller, Anthony Pinn, and Bernard “Bun-B” Freeman, eds. Religion in Hip-Hop: Mapping the New Terrain in the US (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015). Review Essay. “Black Millennial Music and the Critical Study of Religion: A State of the Field,” H-AmRel, H- Net Reviews (October).
2015 Andrew Hartman, A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). Review Essay. “Confessions of a Hollywood Liberal: American Sitcoms and Culture Wars, from Norman Lear to ‘Parks and Recreation’” Marginalia Review of Books (March).
———. Review Essay. “You Can't Endorse Me, But I Endorse You: American Religion and Politics in the Age of the Culture Wars” H-AmRel, H-Net Reviews (Sept 2015).
2015 Kevin Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books, 2015). Review Essay. “The Businessman's Revival” H-AmRel, H-Net Reviews (June 2015).
2014 Jeremy Stolow, ed. Deus in Machina: Religion, Technology, and the Things in Between for Material Religion (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014) in Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief 10:4 (2014), 528-529.
2014 Monica M. Miller, Religion and Hip-Hop (New York: Routledge, 2013). Review Essay. “Hip-Hop and the Study of Religion: Diagnoses and Possibilities,” in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 26:1.
Web Essays
2019 “After all the Handwringing, We’re Now Seeing Exactly Why Conservative Christians Support Trump,” Religion Dispatches - Rewire News. Available here:
2019 “The Return of Archie Bunker,” CNN Opinion. Available here:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/25/opinions/all-in-the-family-archie-bunker-return
s-in-trump-era-rolsky/index.html
2018 “Off the Cuff: Teaching with TIF,” The Immanent Frame: Secularism, Religion, and the Public Sphere. Available here: https://tif.ssrc.org/2018/09/20/teaching-with-the-immanent-frame/
2018 “The Fantasy of Analytics: Religion, Fantasy Sports, and the NFL Draft ,” Sacred Matters. Available here: https://sacredmattersmagazine.com/a-critical-study-of-fantasy-football/ [commissioned]
2017 “Black Millennial Music, Critical Studies of Religion, and the Gravitational Pull of Kendrick Lamar,” Sacred Matters. (January 24th). Available here: https://sacredmattersmagazine.com/religion-in-hip-hop-part-1-exploring-the-religious- history-of-kendrick-lamar/ [commissioned]
2017 “American Cultural Warfare and the Recent Religious Past,” The Martin Marty Center: Religion and Culture Forum (July 25th). Available here: http://voices.uchicago.edu/religionculture/2017/07/27/american-cultural-warfare- and-the-recent-religious-past-a-response-to-russell-johnson-by-l-benjamin-rolsky/
2017 “Taking Conservatism Seriously in the Age of #MAGA,” The Martin Marty Center: Religion and Culture Forum (March 8th). Available here: https://voices.uchicago.edu/religionculture/2017/03/08/studying-religion-in-the-era-of- trump-part-5-of-a-scholars-roundtable-by-l-benjamin-rolsky/
2016 “Colin Kaepernick, Religion, and the Academic Think Piece,” The Marginalia Review of Books (Sept 10th). Available here: http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/mrblog- colin-kaepernick-religion-academic-think-piece/
2016 “Trump, Awash in a Sea of Faith,” The Marginalia Review of Books (June 27th). Available here: http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/mrblog-trump-awash-sea-faith/
2016 “How the Lear/Reagan Debates Mirrored the Course of America’s Culture Wars,” The Norman Lear Center (June 20th). Available at: http://learcenter.org/learreagan- debates-mirrored- course-americas-culture-wars/
2016 “‘The Evangelicals’ and the Rise of Donald Trump,” The Marginalia Review of Books (June 17th). Available here: http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/mrblog- evangelicals-rise-donald-trump/
2015 “Are Comedians the Political Vanguard?” The Christian Century (July 8th). Available here: http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2015-07/are-comedians- political-vanguard
2014 “The Jester and the Editor: A Tale of Frustration, Friendship, and the Making of People for the American Way,” The Christian Century (Oct 1 2014). Available here: http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2014-10/tale-frustration-friendship-and- making-people-american-way
HONORS AND AWARDS
2017 Grant for Manuscript Production, The University Seminars Columbia University
2014 Best Graduate Student Paper Prize, California Studies Association, Symposium on Religion in California, University of California, Berkeley
2014 Edwards-Mercer Prize for Dissertation Research, Drew University
2011 Goizueta Foundation Award for Academic Excellence, Hispanic Summer Program
2010 Dwight-Hooker Fellowship Recipient, Yale Divinity School
2006 Best Concurrent Major, Religious Studies and History, Arizona State University
PRESENTATIONS
Conference Activity/Participation
2019 “Establishments and Their Fall: Direct Mail, the New Right, and the Transformation of American Politics. Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, San Diego, CA.
2019 “Keyword: Popular Culture,” Religion and its Many American Publics, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, April 7-9 [invited]
2019 “Making the Christian Right: Media, Religion, and the Academic Study of Evangelicalism,” on a panel, Evangelical Loyalties Reconsidered: A Roundtable on Sex, Power, and the Media in the Study of American Evangelicalism, at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago, IL, January 2019.
2018 “Left-Wing Patriotism: Race, Religious Toleration, and the Pendulum of Liberty,” Fractured Paradigms: Biennial Scholars’ Conference on American Jewish History, Philadelphia, PA, June 2018.
2017 “Norman Lear and the Spiritual Politics of Religious Liberalism,” on a panel, Whose Backlash? Liberal Religious Responses to Conservative Populism, 1965-1985, at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Denver, CO, January. Co- organizer
2016 “Religion, Race, and Hip-Hop in a Neo-Liberal Age,” The Florida State University Department of Religion 16th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Tallahassee, FL, February.
2015 Invited Lecture, “Hip-Hop and the 1960s,” Interplay Hip-Hop Symposium at Lehigh University in Lehigh, PA.
2015 Invited Remarks, “Introduction,” The Richard O. and Cindy F. Connell Lecture Series, Harry Stout, at Lehigh University in Lehigh, PA.
2015 “The Lear/Regan Debates in Late Twentieth-Century America, The Florida State University Department of Religion 15th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Tallahassee, FL.
2014 “‘This Dark Diction, Has Become America’s Addition’: Religion, Race, and Hip-Hop in a Neo-Liberal Age,” in Critical Approaches to Religion and Hip-Hop at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, San Diego, CA.
2014 Invited Lecture, “The Reagan/Lear Debates: How a Former Actor and Television Writer Changed the Course of America’s Culture Wars in late Twentieth Century America” at the Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, Los Angeles, CA.
2014 “The Reagan/Lear Debates: How a Former Actor and Television Writer Changed the Course of America’s Culture Wars in late Twentieth-Century America” at the Symposium on Religion in California, Berkeley, CA, University of California-Berkeley.
2011 “The Consumable Other: Becoming the Man in ‘Going to Meet the Man,’” at the Mid- Atlantic Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, New Brunswick, NJ.
2010 “Prophetic Social Activism Confronts American Terrorism: Ida B. Wells and Anti- Lynching Publications” at the Mid-Atlantic Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, New Brunswick, NJ, November.
2009 “Edwards and the Enlightenment: Mapping the “Secular” within the Covenanted Community” at 'A Secular Age': Tracing the Contours of Religion and Belief, Mater Dei Institute of Education, Dublin, Ireland.
2008 “Real Reasons for Publicizing Religion,” at the Fourth Biennial Symposium on Religion and Politics, The Henry Institute, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI.
2008 “Scaling the Wall: President Kennedy's Religious Discourse” and “Religious and Non- Religious Conceptions of the Sacred: Religion and Human Rights,” at the Western Regional Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Pasadena, CA.
2007 “Eisenhower, Religion, and the Founding Fathers: A Response to Communism” and “Worldview and Ontology among the Ho-Chunk People,” at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, San Diego, CA.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Monmouth University
Fall 2019 Introduction to the Study of Religion (Instructor of Record)
Fall 2019 Comparative Religions (Instructor of Record)
Spring 2019 Introduction to the Study of Religion (Instructor of Record)
Spring 2019 Comparative Religions (Instructor of Record)
Fall 2018 Introduction to the Study of Religion (Instructor of Record)
Fall 2018 Comparative Religions (Instructor of Record)
Rutgers University
Fall 2019 American Religious History (Instructor of Record)
Fall 2019 Religions of the Western World (Instructor of Record)
Spring 2019 American Religious History (Instructor of Record)
Drew University
Summer 2012 American Religion in American History: Theories and Approaches (Instructor of Record)
Spring 2012 Church History I: The Early Church (Teaching Assistant)
Summer 2011 American Religion in American History: Theories and Approaches (Instructor of Record)
SERVICE TO THE PROFESSION
Associate Editor, The Journal of Hip-Hop Studies (2016-Present)
Co-Chair, Religion in America Section, for the Mid-Atlantic Region of the American Academy of Religion, (2012-2015)
MEMBERSHIPS
American Academy of Religion
American Historical Association
American Studies Association
American Jewish Historical Society
References
Gastón Espinosa, Arthur V. Stoughton Professor of Religious Studies
Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University Faculty
Kravis Center 268
Claremont, CA 91711
909-621-8395
gaston.espinosa@claremontmckenna.edu
Tisa Wenger, Associate Professor of American Religious History
Yale Divinity School
409 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
203-432-2493
tisa.wenger@yale.edu
John Modern, Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Franklin and Marshall College
P.O. Box 3003
Lancaster, PA 17604
717-358-4771
john.modern@fandm.edu
Paul Harvey, Professor and Presidential Teaching Scholar
Department of History - University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway
Colorado Springs, CO 80918
719-255-4078
pharvey@uccs.edu