Courtney Bender received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University and her B.A. from Swarthmore College. She specializes in contemporary American religion and the social scientific study of religion. She is completing a volume on contemporary spirituality in America and will be published in a forthcoming book, Worlds of Experience: Contemporary Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination. She is author of Heaven’s Kitchen: Practicing Religion at God’s Love We Deliver, University of Chicago Press (2003).
 
Recent Publications
 
“What the Many Lives of Past Lives Tell us About Contemporary Spirituality.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2007.
 
"Touching the Transcendent: On the Status of Religious Experience in the Sociology of Religion" in Everyday Religion, 2007.
 
“Constructing Buddhisms: Interreligious Dialogue and Religious Hybridity" with Wendy Cadge. Sociology of Religion 2006.
Courtney Bender
Courtney Bender
Associate Professor
 
Contact:
 
Columbia University
Department of Religion
80 Claremont Ave Rm 103
New York NY 10027
 
Tel: 212.851.4134
 
 
 
 
 
 
Worlds of Experience
 
After Pluralism
 
Religious, Spiritual, Secular