Phone
Office Location
Hill Hall 729
Courses Taught
UNDERGRADUATE: 790:385 Religion & Politics; 790:371 Early Political Theory; 790:372 Modern Political Theory;
790:356 Sex, Law, and Public Policy.
GRADUATE: 790:512 Ethical Issues in Public Policy and Administration; 790: 520 Liberalism, Religion, and Toleration;
790:511 Contemporary Political Theory; 790:571 American Politics & Public Policy; 790:608 American Political Thought; 790:513 Ethics & Global Politics
Awards
AWARDS: National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at Princeton University; Ford Foundation Lecturer in Women’s Studies in Religion at Harvard Divinity School; Henry Luce Fellow in Theology at Harvard Divinity School; Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at University of Warsaw in Spring 1999; Fulbright Senior Specialist, University of Warsaw, Fall 2001. Charles Pine Outstanding Teacher Award, Rutgers Newark, 1998.
Education
B.A. College of Mount St. Vincent.
Ph.D. Columbia University.
Expertise
Religion & Politics in the United States and in comparative perspective; public policy and church-state relations. Catholics and American Politics. Catholic bishops and public policy (e.g., abortion politics and same-sex marriage). Current research is on the political implications of the clergy sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.
Publications
BOOKS: Faith-Based Initiatives & the Bush Administration: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (with J. Formicola and P. Weber (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).
Piety, Politics, and Pluralism: Religion, the Courts and the 2000 Election (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002);
A Wall of Separation: Debating the Public role of Religion, with Ted Jelen (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998);
Abortion Politics in American States, with Timothy Byrnes (M.E. Sharpe Pub, 1995);
The Catholic Church and Abortion Politics: A View From the States, with Timothy Byrnes (Westview Press, 1992).
ARTICLES & BOOK CHAPTERS: “Contemporary American Catholicism and the Challenge of Gender Equality,” in Untangling Modernities: Gendering Religion & Politics, Herzog & Braude, eds. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 107-142.
“Political Endorsement by Churches,” in Church and State Issues Today, Vol. I, Jones and Duncan, eds. (Praeger Press, 2007), pp. 195-226;
“Ethical Issues and Public Policy,” in Fischer, Miller & Sidney, eds., Handbook of Public Policy Analysis: Theory, Methods, Politics (Taylor & Francis, 2006), pp. 309-327. With Eileen Sullivan.
“Religious Advocacy in New Jersey,” in Cleary & Hertzke, eds., Representing God at the Statehouse: Religion and Politics in the American States (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), pp. 1-25.
Associated Programs
Division of Global Affairs; American Studies Graduate Program