College of Arts and Humanities > Philosophy and Religious Studies > Faculty and Staff > Finbarr Curtis

Finbarr Curtis

Associate Professor, Religious Studies

3305C Newton
fcurtis@georgiasouthern.edu
912-478-0222

PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2007

I study religion and politics as well as theory and method in religious studies. My first book engages subjects ranging from nineteenth-century revivalism to contemporary legal debates about corporations in order to examine how the rhetoric of religious freedom has served as a form of personal and political governance in the United States. My most recent book examines how the profane and offensive style of contemporary illiberalism challenges liberal democratic institutions. Before coming to Georgia Southern, I taught at UC San Diego, New York University, Fresno State, Bucknell University, Lafayette College, and the University of Alabama.

RECENT COURSES

Introduction to Religious Studies
Religion and Politics
Introduction to Christianity
Religion and Irish Identity
Religion and Law
Religious Studies Capstone

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
	Going Low: How Profane Politics Challenges American Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022.
	The Production of American Religious Freedom. New York: New York University Press, 2016.
	“Exercise.” In Religion, Law, USA, edited by Isaac Weiner and Joshua Dubler. New York: New York University Press, 2019.
	“State of Burn After Reading,” in Coen: Framing Religion in Amoral Order, edited by Elijah Siegler. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016.
	“The Study of American Religions: Critical Reflections on a Specialization,” Religion 42 (July 2012): 355 – 372.
	“The Fundamental Faith of Every True American: Secularity and Institutional Loyalty in Al Smith’s 1928 Presidential Campaign,” The Journal of Religion 91 (October 2011): 519 – 544.
	“The Secularity of Intelligent Design,” The Hedgehog Review 13 (Summer 2011): 68 – 78.
	“Ann Taves Religious Experience Reconsidered is a Sign of a Global Apocalypse that Will Kill Us All,” Religion 40 (October 2010): 288 – 292.
	“No Universalizing Deductive-Nomological Explanations, Please; We’re Irish: A Response to Thomas A. Tweed’s Crossing and Dwelling,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77 (June 2009): 424 – 433.
	“Locating the Revival: Jonathan Edwards’s Northampton as a Site of Social Theory,” in Embodying the Spirit: New Perspectives on North American Revivalism, ed. Michael J. McClymond (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004): 47 – 66.

Last updated: 12/19/2023

Finbarr Curtis

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