Shakir Stephen

Shakir Stephen is Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at Middlebury College. His research examines the role of religion in American culture today by considering how American Christians and nonreligious Americans each make sense of the “secular” world they share. His current research draws on fieldwork with Christians in the U.S. South working in the sciences, the arts, and law, whose professional lives are shaped by conflicts and negotiations with secular ideas and institutions. Further work based on interview and survey research with nonreligious Americans asks what “religion” comes to mean for people outside of it (some of this work has been published in journals like Sociology of Religion). His courses take up religion and secularism in American culture, often at the intersections of politics, scientific knowledge, and the arts, making use of qualitative and quantitative data to approach religious life in the United States. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an M.A. from New York University, both in religious studies.