Sophie Bjork-Jame
Biographic Data
| ID | 160050 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sophie Bjork-Jame |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sophie |
| FAMILY NAME | Bjork-Jame |
| SIGNATURE | BJORK-JAME S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vanderbilt University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9196-1952 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 74 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Reproductive Futurism in Evangelical and Secular Environmental Politics
This article explores the relationship between ideas about kinship and climate politics through the concept of reproductive futurism. Ideas about reproduction and future children define multiple sites of North American engagements with the climate crisis, where the human child comes to represent ‘a safe passage into the future’ (Sheldon 2016). Even within efforts to address climate change, this framework limits ethical action to solely the human,…
Ethnographies of Religious Responses to Climate Change
While science has guided our understanding of the problem of climate change, and to date policy work has led our responses, many look to religions—both formal and informal—for guidance to confront and navigate the multiple dimensions of the crisis. From heat waves to floods, rising sea levels, climate refugees, and mass extinctions, the threat of climate collapse is increasingly felt and feared. We need new cognitive and emotional capacities to u…
Our hands are tied
Focus on the fetus
Deploying fetal death
While abortion foes in the United States rhetorically promote 'life,' discursive invocations of death are foundational to antiabortion advocacy. Pro-life strategists have made gains mandating the mourning of aborted fetuses through fetal burial bills, which require abortion providers to cremate or bury fetal tissue from abortion procedures. Fetal burial bills are inextricably tied to biopolitical regimes that make and manage grievable life. Drawi…
Lifeboat Theology
In this paper, I use insights from extensive ethnographic research with evangelicals in Colorado Springs, Colorado to investigate how competing ethical understandings of time and the future underpin conceptions of and responses to ecological collapse. It argues that a dominant apocalyptic chronotope in US evangelicalism makes the future earth redundant, an understanding that Christian Right leaders have linked to decreased interest in environment…
A Climate of Misogyny
In this interview, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe discusses with Sophie Bjork-James and Josef Barla: the issue of gender inequality in the natural sciences; the toxic entanglement of right-wing extremism, sexism and anti-science rhetoric in discourses on climate change; the far-reaching institutional and social consequences of the Trump administration's attacks on climate science research and advocacy; as well as the politics of ignorance and…
Introduction
This essay introduces the special issue of Australian Feminist Studies on ‘Climate Change, Gender, and Authoritarianism: Entanglements of Anti-Feminism and Anti-Environmentalism in the Far-Right’. Starting from the hypothesis that anti-feminism functions as a metalanguage in the far-right’s fight against liberal democracy as well as social and environmental justice, this special issue explores how anti-feminism and anti-environmentalism merge and…
Racializing misogyny
This article asks how an anti‐racist, feminist anthropology can help us understand the expansion of the radical right, with a focus on the online white nationalist movement. It demonstrates how homophobia and anti‐feminism are two of many pathways into the online white nationalist movement. In effect, white nationalists work through online venues to racialize homophobia and anti‐feminism. They articulate a view of white racialization where gender…
Whither Whiteness and Religion
Within the broad interdisciplinary domain of religious studies, explicit attention to whiteness remains limited. Not only does this situation reinforce an analytic division between race and religion, it also works to obscure the racial dimensions of dominant Western forms of religion, particularly Protestant Christianity in the United States, as well as the religious dimensions of white supremacy. Tracing the contours of a body of scholarship on …
This is Our Message
How can a patriarchal religion survive a feminist and sexual revolution? As two recent books on women in conservative Christianity in the United States demonstrate, it turns out that it must rely on women’s voices to defend the patriarchy. In a seemingly ironic twist, defending the patriarchy can also radically reshape religious gender norms and create an expanded platform for women to achieve influence, if not overt power. These two books show u…
White Sexual Politics
In this paper, I explore how the US-based Religious Right and white nationalist movements are both organized around a similar politics of gender rooted in defending the patriarchal family. While the broader meanings of the family differ in each framework—either providing the foundation for the racial nation or the religious order—there is surprising agreement across these movements around understanding the family as a heterosexual and patriarchal…
Christian Nationalism and LGBTQ Structural Violence in the United States
This paper uses anti-LGBTQ bias within evangelical Christianity as a case study to explore how nationalist movements justify prejudicial positions through framing privileged groups as victims. Since Anita Bryant’s late 1970s crusade against what was dubbed the “homosexual agenda,” white evangelicals have led a national movement opposing LGBTQ rights in the United States. Through a commitment to ensuring sexual minorities are excluded from civil r…
Training the Porous Body
In this article, I examine how US evangelical opposition to LGBT rights stems from a unique understanding of sexuality and the person. As my respondents explained to me in over sixteen months of field research, evangelical rejection of LGBT individuals and practices is rooted not simply in prejudice but also in a culturally specific notion of personhood that requires Christian bodies to orient themselves to the divine. In evangelical Christianity…
When White Nationalism Became Popular
Feminist Ethnography in Cyberspace
White Sexual Politics
In this paper, I explore how the US-based Religious Right and white nationalist movements are both organized around a similar politics of gender rooted in defending the patriarchal family. While the broader meanings of the family differ in each framework—either providing the foundation for the racial nation or the religious order—there is surprising agreement across these movements around understanding the family as a heterosexual and patriarchal…
Introduction
This essay introduces the special issue of Australian Feminist Studies on ‘Climate Change, Gender, and Authoritarianism: Entanglements of Anti-Feminism and Anti-Environmentalism in the Far-Right’. Starting from the hypothesis that anti-feminism functions as a metalanguage in the far-right’s fight against liberal democracy as well as social and environmental justice, this special issue explores how anti-feminism and anti-environmentalism merge and…
Training the Porous Body
In this article, I examine how US evangelical opposition to LGBT rights stems from a unique understanding of sexuality and the person. As my respondents explained to me in over sixteen months of field research, evangelical rejection of LGBT individuals and practices is rooted not simply in prejudice but also in a culturally specific notion of personhood that requires Christian bodies to orient themselves to the divine. In evangelical Christianity…
Feminist Ethnography in Cyberspace
Lifeboat Theology
In this paper, I use insights from extensive ethnographic research with evangelicals in Colorado Springs, Colorado to investigate how competing ethical understandings of time and the future underpin conceptions of and responses to ecological collapse. It argues that a dominant apocalyptic chronotope in US evangelicalism makes the future earth redundant, an understanding that Christian Right leaders have linked to decreased interest in environment…
Deploying fetal death
While abortion foes in the United States rhetorically promote 'life,' discursive invocations of death are foundational to antiabortion advocacy. Pro-life strategists have made gains mandating the mourning of aborted fetuses through fetal burial bills, which require abortion providers to cremate or bury fetal tissue from abortion procedures. Fetal burial bills are inextricably tied to biopolitical regimes that make and manage grievable life. Drawi…
When White Nationalism Became Popular
Whither Whiteness and Religion
Within the broad interdisciplinary domain of religious studies, explicit attention to whiteness remains limited. Not only does this situation reinforce an analytic division between race and religion, it also works to obscure the racial dimensions of dominant Western forms of religion, particularly Protestant Christianity in the United States, as well as the religious dimensions of white supremacy. Tracing the contours of a body of scholarship on …
Our hands are tied
This is Our Message
How can a patriarchal religion survive a feminist and sexual revolution? As two recent books on women in conservative Christianity in the United States demonstrate, it turns out that it must rely on women’s voices to defend the patriarchy. In a seemingly ironic twist, defending the patriarchy can also radically reshape religious gender norms and create an expanded platform for women to achieve influence, if not overt power. These two books show u…
Feminist Ethnography in Cyberspace
When White Nationalism Became Popular
Training the Porous Body
In this article, I examine how US evangelical opposition to LGBT rights stems from a unique understanding of sexuality and the person. As my respondents explained to me in over sixteen months of field research, evangelical rejection of LGBT individuals and practices is rooted not simply in prejudice but also in a culturally specific notion of personhood that requires Christian bodies to orient themselves to the divine. In evangelical Christianity…
Christian Nationalism and LGBTQ Structural Violence in the United States
This paper uses anti-LGBTQ bias within evangelical Christianity as a case study to explore how nationalist movements justify prejudicial positions through framing privileged groups as victims. Since Anita Bryant’s late 1970s crusade against what was dubbed the “homosexual agenda,” white evangelicals have led a national movement opposing LGBTQ rights in the United States. Through a commitment to ensuring sexual minorities are excluded from civil r…
Racializing misogyny
This article asks how an anti‐racist, feminist anthropology can help us understand the expansion of the radical right, with a focus on the online white nationalist movement. It demonstrates how homophobia and anti‐feminism are two of many pathways into the online white nationalist movement. In effect, white nationalists work through online venues to racialize homophobia and anti‐feminism. They articulate a view of white racialization where gender…
Whither Whiteness and Religion
Within the broad interdisciplinary domain of religious studies, explicit attention to whiteness remains limited. Not only does this situation reinforce an analytic division between race and religion, it also works to obscure the racial dimensions of dominant Western forms of religion, particularly Protestant Christianity in the United States, as well as the religious dimensions of white supremacy. Tracing the contours of a body of scholarship on …
This is Our Message
How can a patriarchal religion survive a feminist and sexual revolution? As two recent books on women in conservative Christianity in the United States demonstrate, it turns out that it must rely on women’s voices to defend the patriarchy. In a seemingly ironic twist, defending the patriarchy can also radically reshape religious gender norms and create an expanded platform for women to achieve influence, if not overt power. These two books show u…
White Sexual Politics
In this paper, I explore how the US-based Religious Right and white nationalist movements are both organized around a similar politics of gender rooted in defending the patriarchal family. While the broader meanings of the family differ in each framework—either providing the foundation for the racial nation or the religious order—there is surprising agreement across these movements around understanding the family as a heterosexual and patriarchal…
A Climate of Misogyny
In this interview, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe discusses with Sophie Bjork-James and Josef Barla: the issue of gender inequality in the natural sciences; the toxic entanglement of right-wing extremism, sexism and anti-science rhetoric in discourses on climate change; the far-reaching institutional and social consequences of the Trump administration's attacks on climate science research and advocacy; as well as the politics of ignorance and…
Introduction
This essay introduces the special issue of Australian Feminist Studies on ‘Climate Change, Gender, and Authoritarianism: Entanglements of Anti-Feminism and Anti-Environmentalism in the Far-Right’. Starting from the hypothesis that anti-feminism functions as a metalanguage in the far-right’s fight against liberal democracy as well as social and environmental justice, this special issue explores how anti-feminism and anti-environmentalism merge and…
Focus on the fetus
Deploying fetal death
While abortion foes in the United States rhetorically promote 'life,' discursive invocations of death are foundational to antiabortion advocacy. Pro-life strategists have made gains mandating the mourning of aborted fetuses through fetal burial bills, which require abortion providers to cremate or bury fetal tissue from abortion procedures. Fetal burial bills are inextricably tied to biopolitical regimes that make and manage grievable life. Drawi…
Lifeboat Theology
In this paper, I use insights from extensive ethnographic research with evangelicals in Colorado Springs, Colorado to investigate how competing ethical understandings of time and the future underpin conceptions of and responses to ecological collapse. It argues that a dominant apocalyptic chronotope in US evangelicalism makes the future earth redundant, an understanding that Christian Right leaders have linked to decreased interest in environment…
Our hands are tied
Reproductive Futurism in Evangelical and Secular Environmental Politics
This article explores the relationship between ideas about kinship and climate politics through the concept of reproductive futurism. Ideas about reproduction and future children define multiple sites of North American engagements with the climate crisis, where the human child comes to represent ‘a safe passage into the future’ (Sheldon 2016). Even within efforts to address climate change, this framework limits ethical action to solely the human,…
Ethnographies of Religious Responses to Climate Change
While science has guided our understanding of the problem of climate change, and to date policy work has led our responses, many look to religions—both formal and informal—for guidance to confront and navigate the multiple dimensions of the crisis. From heat waves to floods, rising sea levels, climate refugees, and mass extinctions, the threat of climate collapse is increasingly felt and feared. We need new cognitive and emotional capacities to u…
Political science (13 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Environmental ethics (4 works)