Kathryn Lofton

Kathryn Lofton is a historian of religion focusing on popular culture in the United States. Her scholarship explores the relationship between religion and capitalism in the last two centuries. Her earliest scholarly writing examined the history of Christian modernism and fundamentalism and the historiography of African American religions. She is the author of two books, Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon (2011) and Consuming Religion (2017), and an edited collection, with Laurie Maffly-Kipp, Women’s Work: An Anthology of African-American Women’s Historical Writings from Antebellum America to the Harlem Renaissance (2010). Her current research focuses on work in the history of U.S. religions.

Lofton has served as an editor-at-large for The Immanent Frame; co-curated (with John Lardas Modern) a collaborative web project on spirituality titled Frequencies; and currently co-edits (also with Modern) Class 200: New Studies in Religion, a book series with the University of Chicago Press.

At Yale Lofton has worked to strengthen faculty governance, diversity, and community ethics. She served as Chair of LGBT Studies, Chair of the Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies; she was a member of the first elected class of the FAS Senate; she chaired the University-Wide Ad Hoc Committee on Procedures for Resolving Complaints of Faculty Misconduct; she served as the inaugural Deputy Dean of Diversity and Faculty Development, Dean of Humanities, and Interim Dean of the FAS. She received the Poorvu Family Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching, the Sarai Ribicoff Award for the Encouragement of Teaching at Yale College, and the Graduate Mentor Award in the Humanities.

Lofton teaches courses on religion in American history, new religious movements, secularism, religion and popular culture, religion and sexuality, and method and theory in the study of religion.