This dissertation charts three strategies undertaken by American Orthodox Jews to fashion a Judaism for the newly college educated Jewish masses in the decades following the Holocaust. By examining the ways in which modern Orthodox, Chabad Hassidim, and Haredi Jews turned to the…
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This study tries to understand how the postcolonial state in India has treated its religious minorities since independence (1947-1997) by examining the official policy of secularism which, in the Indian context, stands for 'equal respect for all religions.' I argue that since th…
This dissertation examines the prospects of laïcité (secularism) in France today by exploring transformations in perceptions of symbols and practices associated with the Roman Catholic faith. My research works counter to many social scientific studies of religion and secularism …
This dissertation examines the manner in which Turkish secularism has come to delimit, define, and calibrate minority religious practices as well as citizenship policies by tracing different categories of the secular and the religious in Turkey. It is an ethnographic study of co…
Since the implementation of the Guest Worker Program in the 1950s, Germany has struggled to accept that Turkish immigrants, along with subsequent generations, constitute a large part of its society. Thilo Sarrazin's book, Deutschland schafft sich ab, which has been at the center…
Gender inequality is a pervasive global phenomenon, particularly in parliamentary representation and the political realm as a whole. Previous scholarship looked for explanations in the countries’ national development levels, political regimes and electoral systems. Some scholars…
This dissertation argues that American autobiographies from the eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries typically promote ideological programs, and that with the rise of secularism these programs are often haunted by the negative affects they must necessarily disavow. Throug…
In industrial societies where civil law and state institutions have become well-established secular vehicles for governing the populace, it is widely assumed that the state no longer has an interest in fortifying the religious sector as a complementary source of social control. …
This dissertation examines the Imam-Hatip (preacher-prayer leader) schools in Turkey from 1995 to 1997. The Imam-Hatip schools are secondary elective vocational education institutions under the supervision and control of the Ministry of Education and the Directorate of Religious…
I adopt an interpretive methodology through which I investigate the becoming of Muslim identities in three national integration discourses. I analyse the meanings of integration in abstract, in context and through texts across contexts, and working within a broadly critical cons…
Like many contemporary intellectuals from a variety of schools of thought writing in the 1960s, Father Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983) believed "secularism" to be the "crisis" of his time. This dissertation explicates and evaluates Schmemann's understanding of secularism and his…
Persepolis: The Story of Childhood and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return are unique because they capture a generational saga within a gendered narrative of dawning self-awareness. Because the context of Iranian politics and the situation of the Muslim women are autobiographica…
The active presence of conservative Christians in American politics over the past forty years prompts many important historical questions about the role of religion in a largely secularized democratic society. Despite being key contributors to the "right-turn" in modern American…
The Hindu nationalist movement's combination of State power and paramilitary violence has established unsecular, subordinationalist, cleansing counter-polities within the Indian Republic. Despite constitutional guarantees of legal equality and protection, minorities (Christians …
niddahThis study of religious change explores how the dialogue with secular, "western," sensibilities shapes a traditional social order. Specifically, I examine how orthodox Jews in Israel negotiate their participation in Israeli culture and its major social institutions while a…
Europe is currently embroiled in a debate over the challenges Muslim immigration poses to national identity and cultural cohesion. As nations seek the best way to accommodate the values of the mainstream while respecting the rights and beliefs of Muslim minorities, they must mak…
The Limits of Secular Criticism: World Literature at the Crossroads of Empires offers a colonial history of literature at the intersections of the French and British empires, nineteenth-century moral education and reforms in Qur'anic instruction. My argument is that literature, …
Why do secular states pursue substantially different policies towards religion? Three cases analyzed in this work---the US, France, and Turkey---indicate sharp differences both in general policy trends and in particular policies, such as bans on students wearing certain religiou…
In Turkey, Islamists and secularists have long battled to control public opinion. Secularists have attempted to lock religion into the private sphere. For their part, Islamists have struggled to gain and maintain public visibility. On each side, activists have exerted pressures …