K. Tobey, c.v. April 2014, page 1
Kristen J. Tobey
EDUCATION
University of Chicago Divinity School
Ph.D., Anthropology and Sociology of Religion, 2010
Dissertation: Performing Marginality: Identity and Efficacy in the Plowshares Nuclear
Disarmament Movement
(Martin Riesebrodt, advisor; W. Clark Gilpin and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, readers)
Qualifying Examinations: Classic Theory in Anthropology and Sociology of Religion;
Contemporary Theory in Anthropology and Sociology of Religion; Ideologies and Utopias; History of Christianity, 1600-present (Christianity in America)
M.A., 2002
DePaul University
B.A., Religious Studies and English (with highest honors, Outstanding Graduate in Religious
Studies), 2000
ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT
2014-presentVisiting Assistant Professor,
John Carroll University Department of Theology and Religious Studies
2013-2014Visiting Assistant Professor,
University of Pittsburgh Religious Studies Department
2011-2013 Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow,
University of Pittsburgh Religious Studies Department
2009-2013Instructor,
Carnegie Mellon University History Department (Fall 2012, 2013)
St. Xavier University Religious Studies Department (Fall 2010)
DePaul University Religious Studies Department (Winter 2009-Fall 2010)
RESEARCH AREAS
Religious communities in contemporary America, boundary construction and maintenance, collective and individual religious identity, status in religious communities, hybrid religiosities
TEACHING AREAS
American religious history and culture, religion in contemporary America, sociology of religion, theory and method in Religious Studies
COURSES TAUGHT (additional details provided on pp. 6-7)
The American Religious ExperienceIntroduction to Religion
Minority Religions in AmericaReligious Worlds in Comparative Perspective
Religious Communities in AmericaReligions of the West/The Faiths of Abraham
Religion and Law in AmericaReligion in Society
Religion and Culture in AmericaPhilosophy of Religion
Religion and American PoliticsLived Religion in Copenhagen (two-week study
Migration in American Religionabroad module)
RELATED EXPERIENCE
2013-presentSection Sub-Editor, Religion in Culture section, Religious Studies Review, Rice University Department of Religious Studies/Wiley Journals
2007-2010Managing Editor, Sightings (an electronic journal treating religion in public life), Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion, University of Chicago Divinity School (
PUBLICATIONS
Peer-reviewed article:
2012“‘Have we made ourselves inaccessible?’: Plowshares Disarmament Activists’ Rhetoric of Marginality,” The Journal of Political Theology, 13:1.
Under review:
“Beyond Religious Freedom: Religious Activity in the Trials of Plowshares Nuclear Disarmament Activists,” article under review at The Journal of Religion.
Encyclopedia entries:
2014“Berrigan, Daniel and Philip,” “Day, Dorothy,” “Free Exercise Clause,” “Oklahoma City Bombing,” and “Polygamy,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion and Politics in America, ed.Philip DiMare. ABC-CLIO, forthcoming.
Digital publications:
2013“The Catholic Left and the Media,” Sightings, May 23, 2013.
2011“Blood and Hammers: Elderly Anti-Nuclear Activists Sentenced to Jail,” Religion Dispatches, April 6, 2011.
2010“Coding Character: Religious Assemblies and Zoning Laws,” Sightings, April 15, 2010.
2009“The Limits of Marginality: Violence and Nonviolence in the Plowshares Nuclear Disarmament Movement,” The Religion and Culture Web Forum, December 2009.
Invited response to Mateo Taussig-Rubbo’s “Sacred Property: Searching for Value in the 9/11 Rubble,” The Religion and Culture Web Forum, June 2009.
2007Invited response to Clark Gilpin’s “Secularism: Religious, Irreligious, Areligious,” The Religion and Culture Web Forum, March 2007.
Book Reviews:
2015The Spirit’s Tether: Family, Work, and Religion among American Catholics, by Mary
Ellen Koneiczny, Oxford UP, 2014, in The Journal of Religion, forthcoming.
2014Religion and Modern Society: Citizenship, Secularisation and the State, by Bryan S. Turner, Cambridge University Press, 2011, in The Journal of Religion, forthcoming.
2013The Catonsville Nine: A Story of Faith and Resistance in the Vietnam Era, by Shawn Francis Peters, Oxford University Press, 2012, in The Journal of Church and State, 55.44 (Fall 2013).
2012The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity, Michael J. Lacey and Francis Oakley,
eds., Oxford University Press, 2011, in The Journal of Religion, 92:2 (April
2012).
2011The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination, by Courtney Bender, University of Chicago Press, 2010, in The Journal of Religion, 91:2 (April 2011).
Religious Intolerance in America: A Documentary History, John Corrigan and Lynn S. Neal, eds., University of North Carolina Press, 2010, in The Southern Humanities Review, 45:4 (Fall 2011).
2010 Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation, by Rodney Clapp, Westminster John Knox, 2008, in The Southern Humanities Review, 44:4 (Fall 2010).
2009Religion and War Resistance in the Plowshares Movement, by Sharon Erickson Nepstad, Cambridge University Press, 2008, in The Journal of Religion, 89:4 (October 2009).
The Catholic Worker After Dorothy: Practicing the Works of Mercy for a New Generation, by Dan McKanan, Liturgical Press, 2008, in The Journal of Religion, 89:3 (July 2009).
AWARDS AND HONORS
2011-2013 University of Pittsburgh Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship
2009-2010Martin Marty Center Dissertation Fellowship, University of Chicago Divinity School
2008University of Chicago Divinity School Summer Research Award
2007Leo Sandon Award for Best Paper, Florida State University Graduate Student Symposium
2006Jerald Brauer Seminar Fellowship, University of Chicago Divinity School (seminar topic: Religion and Violence in America)
INVITED LECTURES
2014“‘My old foundation was broken up’: A Sociohistorical Perspective on Religion and Psychiatry in America”
When God Talks Back: A Symposium with Tanya Luhrmann
Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic/University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, April
2013“Judging the Facts and Seeing Beyond Them: Rethinking Paradigms in Religion and Law”
Centenary College of Louisiana Religion Matters Lecture Series, October
“Balancing Virtuosity and Solidarity in and through Symbolic Action”
Centenary College of Louisiana Christian Leadership Center, October
2012“Religious Exemptions and the Supreme Court”
University of Pittsburgh Secular Students’ Alliance, October
“Beating Nukes into Plowshares: Religious Activism and the Political Imagination”
DePaul University Religion in Society Lecture Series, February
2011“‘To undo the blasphemy what a labor!’: The Restoration and Remarking of Symbols in Plowshares Nuclear Disarmament Actions”
University of Pittsburgh Religious Studies Brown Bag Colloquium Series, September
2009“On Two Altars: Sacrifice and Countersacrifice in the Plowshares Nuclear Disarmament Movement”
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, April
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
2014“Not Non-Mormons: Belonging without Believing in the LDS Church”
American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting (Religion and the Social Sciences, Religious Conversions, Secularism and Secularity, and Sociology of Religion Groups), San Diego, CA, November
“‘Each man, each woman, each child’: The Changing Contours of the LDS Missionary Program”
American Academy of Religion Midwest Regional Meeting (Religion and American Culture Group), Ada, OH, April
2012“Gathering the Saints: Missionary Training Manuals and the Cultivation of Mormon Community”
Society for Utopian Studies Annual Meeting, Toronto, ON, October
2011“An Identity Project in Flux: Rhetorical Negotiation of Gentile Involvement in the Jewish Agrarian Movement”
American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting (Study of Judaism Section), San Francisco, CA, November
“Legal Activity as Religious Activity: Scientology in the U.S. Courts”
Society for Utopian Studies Annual Meeting, State College, PA, October
2010“‘Objection, Your Honor—she’s talking about God!’: Martyrdom and the Courts in the Plowshares Nuclear Disarmament Movement”
American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting (Anthropology of Religion Group and Religion, Law, and Culture Group), Atlanta, GA, November
2009“Transferring Reality: Violence and Nonviolence in the Plowshares Nuclear Disarmament Movement”
American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting (Religion, Social Conflict, and Peace Group), Montreal, QC, November
“The Strategic Construction of Levity in the Plowshares Movement”
American Academy of Religion Midwest Regional Meeting (Religion and American Culture Group), Chicago, IL, April
“‘Nothing that would distinguish them as Jews’: Transformations of Religion and the Body in American Jewish Agricultural Utopias”
Southern Humanities Council Annual Meeting, Durham, NC, February
2008“‘Blood of Jesus, blood of redemption?’: Religious Talk in the Trials of Plowshares Nuclear Disarmament Activists”
American Academy of Religion Midwest Regional Meeting (Religion and American Culture Group), Lake Forest, IL, April
“‘Here, there and everywhere’: The Reconfiguration of Home in the Early Catholic Worker Movement”
Southern Humanities Council Annual Meeting, Knoxville, TN, February
2007“‘We in the underground are trying to do something different’: Prison as Utopia in the Plowshares Movement”
Society for Utopian Studies Annual Meeting, Toronto, ON, October
“‘Blood was already there’: Peace that Ruptures and Blood that Heals in the Plowshares Movement”
Florida State University Graduate Student Symposium, Tallahassee, FL, March
SERVICE
2014-presentMember, Women’s Faculty Caucus Committee on Gender and Diversity, John Carroll University
2013Faculty Reviewer, University of Pittsburgh Undergraduate Review
2011-2014Coordinator, Religious Studies Department Brown Bag Colloquium Series, University of Pittsburgh
2011, 2012, 2013Faculty Judge, University of Pittsburgh Annual Arts and Sciences Graduate Student Expo
2007-2010Member, Advisory Board, Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion, University of Chicago Divinity School
AFFILIATIONS
American Academy of Religion
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Undergraduate:
John Carroll UniversityIntroduction to Theology and Religious Studies
The Faiths of Abraham
Minority Religions in America
University of Pittsburgh Religious Communities in America Religion and Culture in America
Religion and Law in America
Migration in American Religion
Religion and American Politics
Religions of the West
Philosophy of Religion
Carnegie Mellon UniversityIntroduction to Religion
Centenary College of LouisianaLived Religion in Copenhagen (co-instructor for two-week study abroad module)
DePaul UniversityThe American Religious Experience
Religious Worlds in Comparative Perspective
Religion in Society
St. Xavier UniversityReligion and Law in America
Graduate (tie-ins with upper-level undergraduate courses, with additional readings, assignments, and meetings appropriate to MA and PhD students):
University of PittsburghReligious Communities in America
Religion and Culture in America
Migration in American Religion
Student projects advised:
University of Pittsburgh Religious Studies Department Capstone Projects:
2013Deborah Kruger, “Conservative Judaism and the ‘Seeker Syndrome’”
Amy Molitoris, “The Death of Jim Jones: Its Effect on Jonestown Survivors”
Kate Rockenbach, “Differing Notions of Authority as a Cause of Conflict between
Missionaries and Native Americans”
2012Michael Deckebach, “The American Classroom as Sacred Space”
VivekaMandava, “Sustainability and the Sacred in Northern Indian Agricultural
Communities”
2011Charlotte Slack, “Mother God: Attracting Members to the World Mission Society Church
of God in the United States and Korea”
University of Pittsburgh Honors College Brackenridge Fellows Research Projects:
2013Scott Sauter, “You Can’t Hurry Love: Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. Legal History”
2012Eric Wiegandt, “Atheism in American Higher Education”
REFERENCES
Dr. Linda Penkower, Professor and Chair, University of Pittsburgh Department of Religious Studies
/(412) 624-2277
Dr. W. Clark Gilpin, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago Divinity School
/(773) 702-7049
Dr. Martin Riesebrodt, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago Divinity School
/49-(0)30-20054534
Dr. Charles Strain, Professor, DePaul University Department of Religious Studies
/(312) 362-5730
Dr. Paula Kane, Marous Chair of Contemporary Catholic Studies, University of Pittsburgh Department of Religious Studies
/(412) 624-2278