News

Center Faculty Awards 2016-2017 Postdoctoral Fellowships

line drawing of three people talking, one with a micrphone, superimposed on a wall of newspaper clippings

The John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis has awarded four postdoctoral fellowships for the 2016-2017 academic year. Scholars receiving these prestigious fellowships are Christine Croxall, Moshe Kornfeld, Dana Logan, and Gene Zubovich.

201603_Croxall_squareChristine Croxall is finishing her Ph.D. in history at the University of Delaware. Her dissertation analyzes how Catholics and Protestants competed to missionize the Mississippi River Valley, from St. Louis to New Orleans, between 1780-1830, and how the region’s inhabitants—white, Native American, and African-descended—reacted to and shaped the agendas of the missionaries sent to convert them.

Kornfeld_squareMoshe Kornfeld earned his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan in 2015 and then held a postdoctoral fellowship and visiting lectureship at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research takes the study of American Jews as a lens through which to analyze complicated intersections of religion, economy, and politics. His current project investigates Jewish philanthropy, service, and activism in Post-Katrina New Orleans.

Logan_squareDana Logan earned her Ph.D. in religious studies from Indiana University and is currently teaching at Mercyhurst University. Focused on the role of religious ritual in democracy, her current work reframes American “civility” as a specific set of rituals historically developed by elite Protestants and carefully crafted as religious but un-sectarian gestures; her project aims to explain the religious heritage of these mores and the context in which they operate in contemporary U.S. society.

Zubovich_squareGene Zubovich earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, where he currently teaches, and he specializes in the history of American religion in the twentieth century. His first project, “The Global Gospel: Protestant Internationalism and American Liberalism in the Twentieth Century,” traces the political history of liberalism in the US with a major focus on the influence of religion as a shaping force in both domestic and foreign politics through the 1960s.

These awards are one expression of the Center’s mission to support scholars early in their career. Fellows will work to complete their first book projects during their term at the Center, which is renewable for one additional year. They will also participate in the intellectual life of the Danforth Center and the University through teaching courses and joining the Center’s biweekly interdisciplinary seminar. This year the Center received 113 applications for this competitive fellowship. For more information about the Center’s fellowship programs, please see here.

The John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics was established in 2010 and is located on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis. The Center serves as an open venue for fostering rigorous scholarship and informing broad academic and public communities about the intersections of religion and U.S. politics.