CV

Sophie Bjork-James

Department of Anthropology

Vanderbilt University

DEGREES EARNED

Ph.D.   Anthropology, Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2013

M.Ed.  Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 2005

B.A.    Race, Class, and Environmental Politics, Fairhaven College, Western Washington University, 2000

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University, 2021-present

Assistant Professor of the Practice in Anthropology, Vanderbilt University, 2017-2021

Postdoctoral Fellow, Anthropology Department, Vanderbilt University, 2014-2016

RESEARCH

Publications

Monograph

The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism’s Politics of the Family. Rutgers University Press (March 2021).

Edited book

Beyond Populism: Angry Politics and the Twilight of Neoliberalism, edited with Jeff Maskovsky, West Virginia University Press, 2020.

Articles in refereed journals

“Introduction: Entanglements of Anti-Feminism and Anti-Environmentalism in the Far Right,” Special Issue for Journal of Australian Feminist Studies, edited with Josef Barla, Australian Feminist Studies, 36 (2021): 377-387.

“A Climate of Misogyny: Gender, Politics of Ignorance, and Climate Change Denial-An interview with Katharine Hayhoe,” Special Issue for Journal of Australian Feminist Studies, edited with Josef Barla, Australian Feminist Studies, 36 (2021): 388-395.

“Lifeboat Theology: White evangelicalism, apocalyptic chronotopes, and environmental politics” Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, (Forthcoming).

“Racializing misogyny: Sexuality and gender in the new online white nationalism,” Feminist Anthropology, 1.2 (2020): 176-183.

“Christian nationalism and LGBTQ Structural Violence in the United States,” Journal of Religion and Violence, 7.3 (2020) : 278-302.

“White Sexual Politics: The Patriarchal Family in White Nationalism and the Religious    Right,” Transforming Anthropology, 28.1 (2020): 58-73.

“Whither Whiteness and Religion: Implications for theology and the study of religion,” co-authored with Rachel Schneider, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 88.1, (March 2020): 175–199.

“Training the Porous Body: Evangelicals and the Ex-Gay Movement,” American Anthropologist, 120.4 (December 2018): 647-658.

“Feminist Ethnography in Cyberspace: Imagining Families in the Cloud,” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 73.3 (June 2015): 113-124.

“The Apartheid Conscience: Gender, Race, and Re-imagining the White Nation in Cyberspace,” Ethnic Studies Review, 29.2 (Winter 2006): 20-45.

SPECIAL ISSUES edited

2022    “Authoritarianism and the Anthropocene: Far-right extremism, anti-feminism, and anti-environmentalism,” Special Issue for Journal of Australian Feminist Studies, edited with Josef Barla, Australian Feminist Studies, 36.110.

Book chapters

“Reporting on organized racism/white supremacy movements: challenges of amplification, legitimization and mainstreaming for political journalism,” with Tina Askanius, Routledge Companion to Political Journalism.

“Americanism, Trump, and Uniting the White Right,” in Beyond Populism: Angry Politics and the Twilight of Neoliberalism, eds. Jeff Maskovsky and Sophie Bjork-James, West Virginia University Press, 2020, 42-60.

“Hacker Nation: Cyberspace and the Feminist Appropriation of Technology in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy,” in Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Kick Their Asses!: Feminist Perspectives on Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, eds. Donna King And Carrie Lee Smith. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012, 98-107.

“Cybersupremacy: The new face and form of white supremacist activism,” in Tactics in Hard Times: Practices and Spaces of New Media, ed. Megan Boler. Boston: MIT Press, 2008*, 405-428.

                        * Published under the name R. Sophie Statzel

Book Reviews

“This is Our Message: Women’s Leadership in the New Christian Right. By Emily S. Johnson and The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities. By Kate Bowler,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 88, Issue 2, June 2020, Pages 594–599.

Invited review of Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil  Rights, by Jessie Daniels. Gender and Society, 24 (2010): 408-409.

Working Papers

“‘White Genocide’: Digital Cultures and the shape of White Nationalist Fear,” in development

Other Publications

2022    “Fueled by virtually unrestricted social media access, white nationalism is on the rise and attracting violent young white men,” The Conversation.

2021    “The FBI’s 2020 Hate Crime Report Shows 12-Year High, But Spotlights Underreporting,” Rantt Media.

2021    “Rick Santorum breezes past the genocidal foundation of white Christian Nationalism,” Religion Dispatches.

2021    “QAnon hasn’t gone away – it’s alive and kicking in states across the country,” The    Conversation.

“The biggest threats to American democracy? White nationalists and politicians who embrace them,” LA Times, October 10, 2020.

“Nearly two centuries ago, a QAnon-like conspiracy theory propelled candidates to Congress,” The Conversation, September 2, 2020.

“Gender and Religion.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology. Ed. John Jackson. New York: Oxford University Press (2019). http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/abstract/document/obo-9780199766567/obo-9780199766567-0202.xml?rskey=hq39HH&result=3&q=bjork-james#firstMatch.

“Many hate crimes never make it into the FBI’s database,” The Conversation, January 4,  2019.

“The ‘Pro-Family’ Movement Has Little to Say About Family Separation,” Religion Dispatches, July 12, 2018.

“What the latest FBI data do and do not tell us about hate crimes in the US, The  Conversation,  Nov. 26, 2017.

“When White Nationalism Became Popular,” Anthropology News, co-written with Jeff Maskovsky, May 18, 2017.

FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS

EXTERNAL FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS

2022-2023        Conference Support Grant, with Sarah Hautzinger (Colorado College), Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; Project: Religious Responses to Climate Turmoil: Anthropological Perspectives

2022-2024        Senior Research Award, National Science Foundation; Project: Democracy, Demography, and Social Movements in the Northwestern United States

2022                Fellowship on the Race, Religion, and American Judaism project sponsored by the Center for Jewish Ethics and the National Endowment for the Humanities,  Reconstructionist Rabbinical College; Project: Strategies for Opposing Antisemitism in the Far Right

2019-2021        Post-PhD Fellowship, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; Project: When the Nazis move next door: Forty years of fighting organized racism in the Pacific Northwest

2020                Individual Research Grant, American Academy of Religion; Project: Religion and Opposition to Organized Racism in the Northwestern United States

2019                Coolidge Fellow, Crosscurrents Research Colloquium, Auburn Seminary, New York; Project: Waiting: The Contested Meaning of Abortion Waiting Periods

2017-2018        Workshop Grant, National Science Foundation; Project: Community Change in Global Perspective

2017- 2018       Conference Support Grant, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; Project: Community Change in Global Perspective

2015-2017        Jack Shand Research Award, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion; Project: In Service To The Father: The Ethics Of Authority And Submission In US Evangelicalism

2010                Doctoral Dissertation Research Award, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; Project: The Political Ethics of Intimacy in Contemporary American Evangelicalism

INTERNAL GRANTS RECEIVED

2022-2023        Immersion Grant, Vanderbilt University, Project: The contested meaning of abortion

2020-2021        Vanderbilt Strong Grant, Vanderbilt University, Project: When the Nazis move next door: Twenty years of fighting organized racism in the Pacific Northwest

2018                Research Scholar Grant, Vanderbilt University; Project: Confronting the Racist Right

2017-2018        Macro-Grant, Institute for Digital Learning, Vanderbilt University

2015-2016        EOS Environmental Fellow, Vanderbilt University: Project: Seeking New Metaphors:  Mobilizing Culture to Confront Environmental Crises

2012-2013        Presidential Research Assistantship with Professor Leith Mullings, President of the American Anthropological Association

2012- 2013       Mellon Fellowship, Committee for the Study of Religion, CUNY Graduate Center; Project: The Political Ethics of Intimacy in Contemporary American Evangelicalism

2011-2012        Dissertation Fellowship, CUNY Graduate Center; Project: The Political Ethics of Intimacy  in Contemporary American Evangelicalism

2010                Doctoral Research Grant, CUNY; Project: The Political Ethics of Intimacy in Contemporary American Evangelicalism

2007-2009        Graduate Teaching Fellowship, CUNY

2008                Doctoral Research Grant, CUNY

Fellowships

2021-present    Fellow, Center for the Analysis of the Radical Right

2020-present    Fellow, Center for Research on Male Supremacism

2018-2019        Junior Faculty Teaching Fellowship, Vanderbilt University; $2,000 for teaching stipend

2018-2019        Mellon Digital Humanities Faculty Fellow, Vanderbilt University: $10,000 research  stipend plus $10,000 for a course buy-out

INVITED PRESENTATIONS

2022    “The Natural Family Movement in the United States,” presentation at the Radcliffe Exploratory Seminar on the Natural Family movement in international perspective, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts

2022    “Evangelicalism, abortion, and neoliberal politics in the United States,” Conference on Christianity and Politics Across the Americas: Transnational Perspectives,” Universidad Católica, Santiago, Chile

2021    “Author meets critic, Sophie Bjork James’ The Divine Institution,” American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting (virtual)

2021    “Author meets critic, Sophie Bjork James’ The Divine Institution,” Society for the Anthropology of Religion Biennial Meeting (virtual)

2021    “Roundtable on Religion and Anti-Racism,” Invited Panel, Society for the Anthropology of   Religion (virtual)

2021    “Biden’s First Hundred Days,” Scholar’s Strategy Network, Tennessee (virtual)

2021    “Keynote, Race and Family Values in the US.,” Famille sans frontiers/Family Without Borders, MSH Val de Loire and Université de Tours (virtual)

2021    “Religion and White Supremacy,” The Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (virtual)

“Be like Sweden!: The US Far-Right and the Swedish Response,” REDEM Seminar – Extremist responses to Covid19 – Mobilizations in and around Sweden, Rethinking Democracy, Malmö University and The Institute for Future Studies, Stockholm University, 2020.

“White Nationalism in the Era of Angry Politics,” Age of Rages Conference, Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore (postponed due to COVID-19)

“The Alt-Right in US History,” Fairhaven College, Bellingham, Washington, 2019.

“Racialized homophobia: Sexuality and gender in the online white nationalist movement,” Critical Understanding of Racialization in the Era of Global Populism, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, June 2019.

“Race, Gender, and Evangelical Theology,” Fordham University, New York, April 2019.

“The Alt-Right and the Legacy of Racism in the US,” Outside the Box Series, Nashville Public Library, 2018.

“Gender and nation in US Evangelicalism,” Religious Studies Colloquium, Middle           Tennessee State University, 2017.

“Understanding the Alt-Right,” Government Accountability Office, Chicago, 2017.

“The Alt-Right in US History,” The Poynter Smart Conference at Vanderbilt, Poynter Institute, 2017.

“Where do we go from here? Racism, Populism, Fascism and the Future of the Hard Right,” Center for Place, Culture, and Politics, City University of New York, 2016.

“Respectability, Race, and Making Gender Sacred in US Evangelicalism,” Colorado College, Colorado, 2016.

“Doing gender/doing religion: Making family and making nation in US Evangelicalism,” Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto, Ontario, 2015.

International Women’s Day Discussion, Scarritt-Bennett Center, Nashville, 2015.

“‘I felt His love wash over me’: Affective Truth in Evangelical Christianity,” University of California at San Diego Anthropology Colloquium, University of California, San Diego, 2014.

“Reading the Bible with James Dobson: The Truth Project, Race, and the Construction of a ‘Biblical Worldview,” The Bible in American Life conference, Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, 2014.

“The ‘Problem’ with Fundamentalism and Other Liberal Myths About Religion,” New York Academy of Sciences Panel, New York, NY, 2013.

“From ‘rules’ to a ‘relationship’: The spiritual faith and political passions of American Evangelicals,” SSRC sponsored conference on Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life, Columbia University, New York, NY, 2011.

SLECTED CONFERENCE ACTIVITY

Panels Organized

“Thirty Years after Contested Lives: Abortion Politics on the World Stage,” American Anthropological Association, 2019.

“How Anthropology Matters in the Anthropocene: Understanding the Cultures and Politics of Climate Change Denial,” Executive Panel, American Anthropological Association, 2017.

“Sacralizing Gender: familiar patterns and divergent directions in global evangelicalism,” American Anthropological Association Meetings, 2015.

“Engaging Secular and Religious Affect,” Affect Theory Conference, 2015.

“The (Re)production of Misery among the Religious(ly) Right(eous): Coercion, Conformity, and Resistance to Hetero/Homonormative Patriarchy in Four Case Studies,” American Studies Association meetings, 2015.

“Uncanny Crossovers: Secular and Protestant Hauntings in Psycho-Medical Knowledge,” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, 2014.

“Affective Economies and Religious Worlds,” American Academy of Religion Annual Conference, 2014.

Conference Presentations

“‘White Genocide’: Digital Cultures, Ethnography, and the shape of White Nationalist Fear,”      American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, 2019.

“White Sexual Politics: The Gendered Politics of White Nationalism,” NORA Conference on Border Regimes, Territorial Discourses, and Feminist Politics, the University of Iceland, Reykjavik, 2019.

“LGBT Bias, Evangelicalism, and the limits of hate as an analytic tool,” American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, 2018.

“The Future in the Age of Biocide: The Temporality of Evangelical Ethics and Politics,”  American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, 2017.

“Exposing ‘Family Values’ in post-liberal times,” American Ethnological Society Meeting, 2017.

“The Interior Public: cultivating internal capacities and public imaginaries in US Evangelicalism,” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, 2016.

“Doing gender/doing religion: US Evangelicalism, the family, and the art of submission” 2015, presented at: Society for the Anthropology of Religion Bi-Annual Meeting, American Studies Association, and American Anthropological Association

“Epistemologies of Affect and Discourses of the Self: Learning to Feel God in US Evangelicalism,” Affect Theory Conference, 2015.

“Constructing Sacred Sexuality: Psychological Discourse in the Ex-gay Movement,” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, 2014.

“‘I felt His love wash over me’: Affective Truth in Evangelical Christianity,” American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, 2014.

“The Meaning of ‘Life’ in the Age of Biocide: The Temporality of Evangelical Ethics and Politics,” Society for the Anthropology of North America Conference, 2013.

“Morality,” part of a Keywords Panel on Austerity and Authority: Governing the Social in Crisis, American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, 2012.

“Longing for Heterosexual Belonging in Evangelical America,” Society for the Anthropology of Religion Bi-Annual Meeting, 2011.

“‘Family Values’: mediating the family and the politics of exclusion,” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, 2008.

“Cybersupremacy and the new face and form of white supremacist activism,” American Ethnological Society Meeting, 2007.

“White Nationalism as Imperial Backlash,” Society for the Anthropology of North America Conference, 2006.

“Gender, Race, and Re-imagining the White Nation in Cyberspace,” National Association for Ethnic Studies Annual Conference, 2006.

“Ignorance and Bliss: White Femininity, Sexual Violence, and the Potential for Anti-racist Alliances,” Rock Ethics Institute’s Epistemologies of Ignorance Conference, 2004.

TEACHING RELATED ACTIVITIES

New Courses Introduced

The Politics of Reproductive Health, 2015-2019.

First Year Writing Seminar, Culture and Climate Change, 2018, 2019.

Community Health Research, 2017, 2020.

Making Racism Visible: Race and the Media, 2017.

Public Scholarship: Practicum in Community Research, 2018.

Additional Courses Taught

Sociocultural Filed Methods, 2017, 2019

Race in the Americas, 2016

Gender and Cultural Politics, 2014

 

SERVICE

To Profession

Reviewer for: Gender and Society, City and Society, Peasant Studies, American Ethnologist, Sex Roles, Material Religion, University of Nebraska Press, Rowman & Littlefield, Journal of Homosexuality, Journal for the Cognitive Study of Religion, Ethnos, Cultural Studies, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Journal of  Rural Studies, Transforming Anthropology, Religions

Served as an expert witness in a criminal trial in Massachusetts regarding a potential white Supremacist, 2018.

New York Academy of Sciences Anthropology Division Board member, 2012-2013,

Student Representative, Executive Board of the Association for Feminist Anthropology, American Anthropological Association, 2010-2012.

Graduate Student Editorial Collective Member, “Findings” Column, for AnthroNow Magazine. Responsible for quarterly contributions to column featuring recent anthropological work and editorial duties, 2009-2011.

Media Coverage