Research and Analysis in the Sociology of Religion (RASR) Archive
The RASR workshop engages students with key pieces of literature related to empirical research, measurement, and data analysis in the sociology of religion. It teaches some alternative approaches to basic data analysis strategies in the sociology of religion and provides an informal seminar‐based context for the collective reading, discussing, and critiquing of each others' scholarly papers in sociology of religion. Workshop readings are drawn from the reading list for the ND doctoral exam in sociology of religion to facilitate preparation for that exam.
RASR is an on-going workshop offered every semester. Both graduate students and affiliated faculty attend these sessions to provide stimulating critiques and analyses of current research at the Center and among sociologists of religion.
Spring 2016
4/25 - Karen Hooge Michalka, "Positionality and Values-Rational Sociology in Ethnography"
4/11 - Linda Kawentel, "Religious Authority and Gender Ideologies within American Catholicism"
3/14 - Brianna McCaslin, "Catholic Contraceptive Use: Lived Religion, Identity and Authority"
2/29 - Kraig Beyerlein, and Peter Ryan, "How Religion Affects Protesters' Costs, Causes, Targets, and Recruitment and Participation Sources"
2/15 - Ines W. Jindra, and Michael Jindra, "How do People Change their Lives? Religion, Community and Recovery from Homelessness and Poverty"
2/1 - Christian Smith, "Understanding Religion"
1/18 - Casey Ritchie Clevenger, "Women with Hearts as Wide as the World: Gender, Race, and Inequality in Women’s Transnational Religious Organizations"
Fall 2015
12/7 - Hilary Davidson, "Generosity, Generativity, and Human Flourishing"
11/23 - Ethan Fridmanski, "Online Communities: A Case Study of Religion and Politics"
10/26 - Shannon Sheehan, "Inverse Inequality: How Both Genders Navigate Identity Amidst the Sexual Double Standard of Hook-up Culture in College"
10/12 - Karen Hooge Michalka and Mary Ellen Konieczny, "Catholics in Crisis: Latino and non-Latino Lay Mobilization and Sexual Ethics"
9/28 - Christian Smith, "Deliverance & Blessings: Understanding Religion"
9/15 - Daniel Escher, "Unmoving People? Coal Mining, Cultural Matching and Micro-mobilization in Central Appalachia"
8/31 - Cole Carnesecca, "Educational Development and the Pace of Religious Change"
Spring 2015
4/29 - Christine Gardner, "Out of the Closet but Still in the Box: Sexual Identity, Rhetorical Agency, and the Reproduction of Constraint"
4/29 - Andre Audette and Christopher Weaver, "Filling Pews and Voting Booths: The Role of Politicization in Congregational Growth"
4/15 - Brad Vermurlen, "The Production of Marginal Culture: The Case of Calvinist Hip-Hop"
3/5 - Cole Carnesecca, "Who's My Neighbor: Collective Identity as a Measure of Congregational Social Engagement in China"
3/5 - Julie Dallavis, "Religious High Schools, College Attainment, and Choice of Major"
2/18 - Kraig Beyerlein and David Sikkink, "Citizenship, Religion, and Protest: Explaining Differential Participation of Latinos in the 2006 Immigrant Rights Marches"
2/18 - Justin Van Ness, "Bystander Assessment: Understanding Processes of Meaning-making in Protest Situations"
2/11 - Atalia Omer, "Hitmazrehut or Becoming of the East: Re-Orienting Israeli Sociology"
2/11 - Robert D. Woodberry, "Who Is My Neighbor? Cultural Proximity And the Diffusion of Dimocracy"
1/28 - Shanna M. Corner, "'Localizing' the Legitimacy of Human Rights: How Particularistic Cultural Models about Religion Matter for the Universalization of Support for International Human Rights"
1/28 - Ethan Fridmanski, "Online Communities: A Case Study of Non-religion in the Age of the Internet"
Fall 2014
12/12 - Jason Springs, "A Tale of Two Islamophobias: The Paradoxes of Civic Nationalism in Contemporary Europe and the United States"
12/12 - Cole Carnesecca, "Theologies of the State: the Meiji Restoration and the Emergence of Religious Modernity in Japan"
12/3 - Linda Kawentel, "Becoming a Bride of Christ: Exploring the Gendered Benefits of Joining Traditional Religious Orders"
11/19 - Meredith Whitnah, "Gender-Based Violence"
11/19 - Gideon Aran, "Religious Violence in Judaism: Past and Present"
11/12 - Karen Hooge Michalka, "Religion, Gender, and Body Satisfaction Among Emerging Adults"
11/12 - Megan Rogers, "Faiths and Fortune: Religion and the Professional Middle Class in Contemporary China"
10/29 - Robert Woodberry, "Aid That Works: Missionaries, Economic Development and the 'Reversal of Fortunes'"
10/29 - Meredith Whitnah - "The Promise of Transition and Elusive Transformation"
10/8 - Michael Jindra, "Culture, Religion and the Dissonances of Development"
9/24 - Brandon Sepulvado, "Religious Nones and Social Network Formation"
Spring 2014
4/24 - Peter Luchau, "Religion Hiding in Plain Sight"
3/20 - Jimi Adams, Discussion whether teenagers influence the religion of their friends on the extent to which teens pick their friends because they are religiously similar
2/20 - Daniel Escher, "Religion, Sensation-Seeking, and Risky Behaviors"
1/29 - Nicolette Manglos-Weber, "Religious Association, Social Incorporation, and the Search for Trust among Migrants from Ghana to the U.S."
Fall 2013
12/11 - Jason Springs, "Violence that Works on the Soul: Structural and Cultural Violence in Religion and Peacebuilding"
11/22 - Mary Ellen Konieczny and Megan Rogers, "Religion, Secular Humanism, and Atheism: USAFA and the Cadets' Free Thinkers Group"
11/1 - Katherine Sorrell, "The Conditions of Legitimacy: Perceptions of Religion among Elite Scientists in the United Kingdom"
10/9 - Nicolette Manglos, "Contexts of Divergence: Religious Differences in Primary School Completion among Women in Sub-Saharan Africa"
9/24 - Mike and Ines Jindra, "Understanding Poverty through the Lens of Nonprofits"
9/6 - Megan Rogers, "Conceptualizing and Measuring Religion in China: Theory and Measures Appropriate for the Case"
Fall 2012
11/29 - Hilary Davidson, "Twinges, Morals, and God: The Motives and Meanings of Financial Generosity in America"
11/15 - Linda Kawentel, Mary Ellen Konieczny, and Peter Mundey, "Understanding Family Schemas in the Catholic Tradition"
10/25 Heather Price, "My Friends Made Me Do It: How Teens' Social Identity Influences Educational Outcomes"
10/4 - Christian Smith et al., "Twenty-Two Theses on the Status of Religion in American Sociology"
9/13 - Kevin Estep and Brian Starks, "Moralization of Political Issues: Religious, Political, and Socio-economic Moral Communities"
8/30 - Brandon Vaidyanathan, "The Beauty of the Thing: Aesthetic Motivation in Religious and Social Movements"
Spring 2012
4/11 - Kraig Beyerlein "Religion as a Double-Edge Sword for Social Activism: The Case of the Spring 2006 Immigrant Rights Protests"
3/28 - Ines Jindra, "Introduction and Chapter 5: Biography, the Trajectory, and Religious Content"
3/07 - Mary Ellen Konieczny, "The Spirit's Tether - Chapter 5 and Introduction"
2/22 - Bob Brenneman, "Homies and Hermanos: Gods and Gangs in Central America"
1/25 - Cole Carnesecca, "Revolution and Religious Reform: the Indigenous Church Movement in Republican China"
Fall 2011
8/30 - Brian Starks, "Catholic Identity Work"
9/13 - Jade Avelis, "Religion and Ideal Age of Marriage among Young Emerging Adults"
9/27 - Meredith Whitnah, NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant Proposal for "South African Religious Organizations’ Involvement in Contemporary Social Problems"
10/11 - Justin Farrell, "Americans’ Responses to the BP Oil Spill"
11/08 - Karen Hooge and David Sikkink, "The Effect of Religious Tradition on Satisfaction in Intimate Partner Relationships"
Fall 2010
11/30 - Justin Farrell,"Sacralization and Environmental Activism"
Discussant: Chris Hausmann
Chris Hausmann,"How Groups Carve Out Fresh Social Facts"
Discussant: Meredith Whitnah
11/09 - Ellen Childs, "Pastoral Leaders’ Relationships with Denominations"
Meredith Whitnah, "Domestic Violence"
10/12 - Amir, "Religious Participation and Politics"
Kari Chirstoffersen and Jade Avelis, "Paranormal and Religious Romance Novels"
09/14 - Cole Carnesecca, "Congregations in China"
08/25 - Ines Jindra, "Gender and Conversion"
Bradley Vermulen, "Consumerism in Young Adults"
Spring 2010
4/22 - Jean Beaman, "Religious Identity Among Second Generation North African Immigrants in France"
Chris Morrissey, "War, Peace, and Religious Advocacy: The Debate Over the Iraq War"
4/8 - Kraig Beyerlein and Justin Farrell, "Religious Traditions, Law, and Protest Willingness"
Amy Jonason, "Does Race Mediate the Religious Experience? Racial Salience and Congregational Identity in the PS-ARE"
3/4 - Kari Christoffersen, "From a Model of the Nation to Models for Citizens: Religious References in U.S. Presidential Addresses"
Steve Offutt, "Multiple Modernities: The Role of World Religions in an Emerging Paradigm"
2/19 - Michael Driessen, "Regulation, Economics and the Churching of France and Italy: Analyzing Religion as a Public Good"
Kraig Beyerein, "Understanding the Dynamics of Congregation Based Mobilization Efforts: The Case of Humanitarian Aid Efforts Along the Sonora-Arizona Border"
1/20 - Hilary Davidson, "Hot for Jesus"
Bradley Vermulen, "Religious Identity Salience and Discussion Network Structure"
Fall 2009
12/4 - Brandon Vaidynatahan and Jon Hill, "Substitution or Symbiosis? Rethinking the Relationship between Religious and Secular Giving *Research Note"
11/14 - Brandon Vaidynathan, "Sustaining Transience: Religion and Expatriate Identity in the Middle East"
10/13 - Peter Mundey, "Making Money Sacred: Conceptualizations of Religious Giving in Evangelical and Mainline Protestant Congregation"
9/22 - Ines Jindra, "Biography, Religious Content and Life Course Agency in Conversion Processes to Various Religious Groups"
Daniel Escher, "Guilt Theory"
Spring 2009
4/15 - Atlia Omer, "The Hermeneutics of Citizenship as a Peacebuilding Process:A Multiperspectival Approach to Justice"
Chris Hausmann, "Focal Strategies for Invoking Ritual Experience and Their Respective Obstacles"
3/25 - Christian Smith with Kyle Longest, "Focal Strategies for Invoking Ritual Experience and Their Respective Obstacles"
Brandon Vaidynathan, "The Discourse of Counter-Differentiation: Volunteers at the Rimini Meeting"
2/11 - Carlos Tavares, "Why Can’t We Be Friends: The Role of Religious CongregationalBased Social Contact for Close Adolescent Friendship"
Brandon Vaidynathan, "Understanding Declining Religious Service Participation Among Catholics: A Comparative Longitudinal Assessment of Religious Socialization"
1/21 - Christian Smith with Kyle Longest, "Religious Trajectories from Teenage Years"
Peter Mundey, "The 'Purpose Driven' Politics of Rick Warren"
Fall 2008
12/3 - Kraig Beyerlein, David Sikkink, and Edwin Hernandez, "Protesting in a New Land: Why Latinos Participated in the 2006 Spring Immigrant Rights Protests"
11/5 - Lisa Weaver Swartz, "This Is My Father's World: American Evangelical Ambivalence Toward Climate Change"
Bradley Vermurlen, "The Emerging Synagogue & Jewish Revitalization in Post-modernity"
9/27 - Jon Hill