Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

Northwestern University, Political Science & Religious Studies, Faculty Member

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Elizabeth Shakman Hurd is Professor of Political Science and Religious Studies and the Crown Chair in Middle East Studies at Northwestern University. Hurd was educated at Wesleyan University (B.A.), Yale University (M.A.), and The Johns Hopkins University (Ph.D) and has taught at Northwestern University since 2002. She studies the politics of religion in U.S. foreign policy and in international relations, and relations between the U.S. and the Middle East, including Turkey and Iran. Hurd is the author of The Politics of Secularism in International Relations and Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion, both published by Princeton, and co-editor with Winnifred Fallers Sullivan of At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion (Columbia, forthcoming) and Theologies of American Exceptionalism (Indiana University Press, 2020). She is also co-editor of Politics of Religious Freedom (University of Chicago) and Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age (Palgrave). Hurd co-directs, with Brannon Ingram, the Global Religion & Politics Research Group at Northwestern, and co-curates, with Winnifred Sullivan, the Teaching Law & Religion Case Study Archive. She is currently writing a book on the American border. Twitter: @eshurd
Address: Dept. of Political Science
Dept. of Religious Studies
Northwestern University
601 University Place
Evanston, IL 60208

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Books by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

Theologies of American Exceptionalism (co-editor, Indiana 2019 (online), 2021 (paperback)

Theologies of American Exceptionalism is a collection of fifteen open access interlocking essays ... more Theologies of American Exceptionalism is a collection of fifteen open access interlocking essays reflecting on the vagaries of exceptionalist claims in and about the United States. Loosely and generatively curious, these essays bring together a range of historical and contemporary voices, some familiar and some less so, to stimulate new thought about America. A print version of this volume will be available in summer 2021. This volume is the first in a book series titled “Religion and the Human” hosted by the IU Center for Religion and the Human.

At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion (co-editor, Columbia, 2021)

From right to left, notions of religion and religious freedom are fundamental to how many America... more From right to left, notions of religion and religious freedom are fundamental to how many Americans have understood their country and themselves. Ideas of religion, politics, and the interplay between them are no less crucial to how the United States has engaged with the world beyond its borders. Yet scholarship on American religion tends to bracket the domestic and foreign, despite the fact that assumptions about the differences between ourselves and others deeply shape American religious categories and identities. At Home and Abroad bridges the divide in the study of American religion, law, and politics between domestic and international, bringing together diverse and distinguished authors from religious studies, law, American studies, sociology, history, and political science to explore interrelations across conceptual and political boundaries. They bring into sharp focus the ideas, people, and institutions that provide links between domestic and foreign religious politics and policies. Contributors break down the categories of domestic and foreign and inquire into how these taxonomies are related to other axes of discrimination, asking questions such as: What and who counts as “home” or “abroad,” how and by whom are these determinations made, and with what consequences? Offering a new approach to theorizing the politics of religion in the context of the American nation-state, At Home and Abroad also interrogates American religious exceptionalism and illuminates imperial dynamics beyond the United States.

Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (Princeton, 2015)

This book is a study of recent state-sponsored efforts to promote religious freedom, religious en... more This book is a study of recent state-sponsored efforts to promote religious freedom, religious engagement, and the rights of religious minorities. Bringing together the study of contemporary religion and global politics in a new way, it charts the lives of these projects in specific contexts and develops a powerful critique of their consequences. In uncovering the gap between the religion that is promoted through these efforts and the rest of the world’s religion, Beyond Religious Freedom challenges the prevailing assumption that the legalization of freedom of religion, engagement with faith communities, and protections for religious minorities are the keys to emancipating society from persecution and discrimination. Instead, these efforts generate social tensions by making religious difference a matter of law, enacting a divide between the religion of those in power and the religion of those without it. This leads to a politics defined by religious difference, favors forms of religion authorized by those in power, and excludes other ways of being and belonging. In exploring the blurred boundaries and dizzying power dynamics that characterize relations between “official religion,” “governed religion,” and “lived religion,” this book charts new territory in the study of religion, politics, and power. It develops a forceful critique of the politics of promoting religious freedom and proposes an alternative approach to the study of religion and governance that will interest scholars and practitioners working at the intersection of religion, law, foreign policy, and international relations.

Politics of Religious Freedom (Co-editor, Chicago, 2015)

This collection of essays, co-edited by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Saba ... more This collection of essays, co-edited by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Saba Mahmood and Peter Danchin, emerges from the Politics of Religious Freedom collaborative research project funded by the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion & International Affairs.

In a remarkably short span of time, religious freedom has taken center stage in many public and policy debates worldwide. Longstanding legal guarantees of religious freedom built into laws and constitutions over the last few centuries are being mobilized while comparable guarantees are introduced into new types of legal instruments, constitutions, and legislation. In legal and public policy circles, religious freedom is presented as the key to emancipating individuals and communities from violence, poverty, and oppression. What exactly is being promoted through the discourse of religious freedom, and what is not? What is being protected under these various legal instruments? What forms of politics are enabled by these activities? How might we describe the cultural and epistemological assumptions that underlie this frenzy? And, what is its longer and contentious history? This volume seeks to understand the various conceptions of religious freedom at play in the world today, their different social and political contexts, and their varied histories. The volume emerged out of the Politics of Religious Freedom research project, a three-year effort funded by the Luce Foundation to study the discourses of religious freedom in South Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States; later expanded to include research on sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil. It is divided into four sections, Religion, History, Law/Politics, and Freedom, each with a brief preface by one of the editors.