Western’s Liberal Studies Department to Host Yale’s Kathryn Lofton April 20

Western’s Liberal Studies Department will host a free public lecture by Kathryn Lofton, professor of Religious Studies, American Studies, History and Divinity at Yale University, titled “Popular Religion in American Democracy,” at 4 p.m. on Thursday, April 20, in Communications Facility 115.

Lofton will speak about her current research on contemporary American religion and its implications for politics and society more broadly.

Lofton's lecture will explore the following: It is easy to imagine we live in a secular state in which religion is importantly removed from public life. This talk considers the central role religious history and religious thought play in our most contemporary public struggles over the American good.

Currently a professor at Yale, Lofton is a historian of religion with interests in contemporary America and popular culture.  In her work, she has examined the ways the history of religion collides with, and is constituted by, the history of corporations, popular culture, race, and gender in the United States.  Her first book was entitled Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon (2011), and her forthcoming book, Consuming Religion (September 2017), offers a profile of religion and its relationship to consumption.

More information about Kathryn Lofton is available online at http://religiousstudies.yale.edu/people/kathryn-lofton. This talk is sponsored by Western Washington University’s Department of Liberal Studies, with additional support from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Departments of History, English, Philosophy and Political Science, and the Program in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Free parking will be available for this event in Lot C/CR (Fairhaven College parking lot), near the Communications Facility building, where the lecture will be held.

For more information, contact Maureen Christman at Western’s Department of Liberal Studies at (360) 650-3030 or maureen.christman@wwu.edu.