Japan Storm - Columbia College - Columbia University

AROUND THE QUADS COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
Courtney Bender is an associate
professor and director of
undergraduate studies in the
Department of Religion. She
is the author of several books,
including The New Metaphysicals:
Spirituality and the
American Religious Imagination,
which won a 2011 Association
of American Publishers
PROSE Book Award. She was
co-chair of the Social Science
Research Council’s Initiative
on Spirituality, Political Engagement
and Public Life and
will chair SSRC’s new interdisciplinary
research initiative on
prayer. Bender earned a B.A.
from Swarthmore and a Ph.D.
from Princeton.
Where did you grow up?
Until I was 11 I lived in the
Shenandoah Valley of Virginia,
and then my family moved
to Lancaster, Pa.
What did you want to be?
I wanted to be an architect
or an archaeologist. I
wanted to build things or
dig things.
How did you become interested
in studying religion?
By the time I went to college
I had abandoned my architecture
plans and thought I
would be an English major,
maybe write poetry. I needed
a fourth course to fill out my
first semester, so I took a
course called “War and Peace”
in the Department of Religion.
The professor lectured standing
on one leg, which kept
our attention. He was a very
brilliant, very odd man, and it
was gripping material.
Religion also interested
me personally. I grew up in a
Mennonite community that
went through a rather big
schism when I was a teenager,
which effectively split
a community that had been
tightly tied together by family
and cultural traditions.
“How could this happen?”
I wondered. With encouragement
from professors, I
spent my senior year writing
an ethnography of the split-off
group. By then, I was hooked
on both ethnographic method
and religious studies.
How did you end up at
Columbia?
I was living in New York and
finishing my dissertation when
I received a call from a friend
in Columbia’s sociology department
who was going on
leave. His department needed
someone to teach his “Mass
Media and Popular Culture”
course. I had never taught a
class, but I said I would do it,
and they agreed to let me. One
hundred undergraduates appeared
on the first day — they
thought they were getting
him. Most of them stayed, and
I learned how to teach pretty
quickly. The year after that, a
job opened up in religion.
What have you been working
on?
I’m starting up some projects
and finishing some others.
My most recent book, The
New Metaphysicals, asks how
spiritual identities take shape
in the United States. Scholars
of all types have tended not
to ask good questions about
people who call themselves
WINTER 2011–12
14
spiritual, or about the institutions
— secular or religious
— that support them. As the
percentage of Americans in
this category continues to
grow, the questions about
how spiritual identity comes
to make sense, and how it
comes to be connected to
particular social and political
aspirations, seem important
to pursue. The questions that
this research posed to me
have subsequently led me
in a number of directions,
including explorations into
the legal and political implications
of American religious
pluralism and the role of
mid-century art museums
in shaping certain secularspiritual
dispositions.
What are you teaching these
days?
This fall, I’m teaching an un-
Five Minutes with … Courtney Bender
dergraduate seminar on religion
in urban life, “Religious
Worlds of New York.” Each
student is conducting a study
of a religious site or community;
we are primarily concerned
with investigating how the city
shapes religious practice, and
in some cases how religious
action impacts city life. In the
spring I will teach “Sociology
of Religion” and a graduate
field methods class.
What’s your favorite food?
I will eat almost anything, as
long as care and attention has
gone into its preparation.
Where do you live?
Claremont Avenue.
Are you married? Do you
have kids?
I am married. My husband
is an associate professor
in the microbiology and
immunology department
uptown. I have two kids,
13 and 7, who attend the
School at Columbia.
What do you do to unwind?
I hang out with my kids in
New York. We try to take one
day a week out of the neighborhood
and if possible out of
Manhattan. I also garden in
the corner outside my office
on 120th and Claremont — I
guess I haven’t fully given up
my interest in digging!
If you could be anywhere in
the world right now, where
would you be?
I’d be nowhere but here. I
appreciate the opportunity to
leave the city sometimes, but
this place has such wonderful,
challenging energy.
What’s your favorite spot in
New York?
This will be different in a few
months, but right now, Governor
Nelson A. Rockefeller
Park on the Hudson, which
is always cool and has a gorgeous
vista.
What’s the last book you
read for pleasure that
you really enjoyed?
Great Expectations, which I
read for the first time this
summer, and Teju Cole’s
novel Open City.
What are you most proud of
on your resume?
My most recent book. It’s
won some awards, and it’s
being read in classrooms and
discussed publicly, so I am
glad that the ideas are getting
out there. But more importantly,
I felt truly alive when
I was researching and writing
it — I hope each of my
students has that experience
at least once, and hope I will
again, soon.
Interview and photo:
Ethan Rouen ’04J, ’11 Business
To watch videos of Bender discussing
additional topics, including
her upcoming Mini-Core class,
“Religious Pluralism and Secular
Society,” which will be taught
in February, go to Web Extras at
college.columbia.edu/cct.