Sean McCloud (Ph.D., UNC Chapel Hill) teaches, researches, and writes about American religions and religion and culture. He is the author of Making the American Religious Fringe: Exotics, Subversives, and Journalists, 1955-93 (2004), Divine Hierarchies: Class in American Religion and Religious Studies (2007), and co-editor of Religion and Class in America: Culture, History, and Politics (2009).

     






 


 

Department of Religious Studies                                 The University of North Carolina at Charlotte         Charlotte, NC 28223                                              Phone: 704-687-2542  
 spmcclou@uncc.edu

 

 

 

Fall 2009 Classes

RELS 2600: Approaches to the Study of Religion  (undergrad)

RELS 6101: Approaches to the Study of Religion (grad)

Research and Teaching Interests 
My approach is multidisciplinary and my research and teaching interests focus on the primary materials of American religions, the cultural history of the study of religion in the United States, and theories and methods for the study of religions. Three broad questions drive my work. First, I am interested in examining how religion in different contexts creates, maintains, or tears down boundaries and identities.  Second, I am interested in how religion both enables and constrains our conceptions of the world. Third, I am fascinated by how religion itself is defined—by academics, journalists, and practitioners—and how such definitions work in social and cultural arenas to “mark” the status of different individuals and groups. My current project is titled In the Spaces Between: Interstitiality and American Religions.

Selected Publications 

Religion and Class in America: Culture, History, and Politics. Co-edited with William Mirola. Boston: Brill, 2009.

Divine Hierarchies: Class in American Religion and Religious Studies. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

"Putting Some Class into Religious Studies: Resurrecting an Important Concept." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75:4 (Dec. 2007): 840-862.

"Liminal Subjectivities and Religious Change: Circumscribing Giddens for the Study of Contemporary American Religion." Journal of Contemporary Religion 22:3  (Oct. 2007): 295-309.

"From Exotics to Brainwashers: Portraying New Religions in Mass Media" Religion Compass 1:1 (Jan. 2007): 214-228.

"New and Alternative American Religions: Changes, Issues, and Trends." In Faith in America: Changes, Challenges, New Directions. Volume I. Edited by Charles H. Lippy. Westport, CN: Praeger, 2006, 227-247.

Making the American Religious Fringe: Exotics, Subversives, and Journalists, 1955-1993. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

"Popular Culture Fandoms, the Boundaries of Religious Studies, and the Project of the Self."  Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4:2 (Nov. 2003): 187-206.