Penny A Edgell

Contact Me

edgell@umn.edu
612-624-9828

1039 Social Science Bldg
267 19th Ave S
Ste 909

Affiliations

• Associate Dean for Social Sciences
• Sociology

Links

• Personal Website

Educational Background & Specialties

Educational Background

• Ph.D.: University of Chicago, 1995.
• M.A.: Sociology, University of Chicago , Chicago , 1989.
• A.B. : Sociology, magna cum laude, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, 1986.

Curriculum Vitae

Specialties

• Culture
• Religion
• Gender & Family
• Symbolic Boundaries & Inequality

Courses Taught

• FSEM 1905 - Religion in America
• Soc 3090 - Topics: Atheists and Others in the U.S.
• Soc 3411W - Understanding Formal Organizations
• Soc 3701 - Social Theory
• Soc 4309/4309H - Religion in American Public Life: Culture, Politics, & Communities
• Soc 4966W - Major Project Seminar
• Soc 8090 - Topics: Religion
• Soc 8735 - Sociology of Culture
• Soc 8790 - Adv. Topics in Social Theory: Religion and Public Life
• Soc 8821 - Research Practicum
• Soc 8890 - Advanced Research Methods: Qual Methods

Research & Professional Activities

Professional Activities

• Assistant Professor: Cornell University , 1995
• Member: American Academy of Religion
• Member: American Sociological Association

Research

• Prof. Edgell is currently working on two NSF-funded research projects. One focuses on how religious, scientific, and legal frameworks intersect to shape citizens’ understandings of controversial social issues (faith-based prison ministry, genetic reproductive technologies, and faith-based refusal of medical treatment for a dependent child). And using the second wave survey data for the American Mosaic Project, she is analyzing Americans’ attitudes towards religious and racial outgroups, public religious expression, and the civic involvement of the non-religious. She is interested in how religion is a simultaneous source of inclusion and exclusion in American life, shaping symbolic boundaries and understandings of moral worth

Publications

• "Distinctiveness Reconsidered: Religiosity, Structural Location, and Understandings of Racial Inequality," with Jacqueline Frost. 2017 online. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.
• "From Existential to Social Understandings of Risk: Examining Gender Differences in Nonreligion," with Jacqueline Frost and Evan Stewart. 2017 online. Social Currents.
• "Atheists and Other Cultural Outsiders: Moral Boundaries and the Non-Religious in the United States," with Douglas Hartmann, Evan Stewart, Joseph Gerteis. 2016. Social Forces 95(2):607-638.
• "Atheists as ‘Other’: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society." with Joseph Gerteis and Douglas Hartmann. 2016. American Sociological Review 72(2):211-234.
• “Reasoning Together Through Telling Stories: How People Talk About Social Controversies,’” with Kathleen Hull, Kyle Green, and Daniel Winchester. 2016. Qualitative Sociology 39(1):1-26.
• “Work-Family Conflict among Black, White, and Hispanic Men and Women,’” with Samantha Ammons, Eric Dahlin, and Jonathan Santo. 2016. Community, Work, and Family 20(4): 379-404.
• "Reasoning Together through Telling Stories: How People Talk About Social Controversies," with Kathleen E. Hull, Kyle Green, and Daniel Winchester. 2016. Qualitative Sociology 39(1):1-26.
• "Loose Connections and Liberal Theology: Blurring the Boundaries in Two Church-Based Communities of Spiritual Practice," with Derek Robey. 2015. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 54(4):649-67.
• "Profiles of Anticipated Support: Religion’s Place in the Composition of Americans’ Emotional Support Networks," with Darin Mather and Eric Tranby. 2013. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 52(2):293-308.
• "A Cultural Sociology of Religion – New Directions ." 2012. Annual Review of Sociology (38): 247-265.
• Religion and Family in a Changing Society. 2005. NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Congregations in Conflict: Cultural Models of Local Religious Life. 1999. UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Contemporary American Religion: An Ethnographic Reader, edited with Nancy Eiesland. 1997. Alta Mira Press/Sage.

Awards

• American Sociological Association Sociology of Religion section Book Award, 2006
• Best Book Award, American Sociological Association Religion Section, 2000
• Visiting Faculty Fellow, Princeton University