Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Biographic Data
| ID | 544528 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Elizabeth Shakman Hurd |
| GIVEN NAMES | Elizabeth Shakman |
| FAMILY NAME | Hurd |
| SIGNATURE | HURD E S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northwestern University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6862-9812 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
“Lovingly, not legalistically”: Representing God in contemporary England
REPRESENTING GOD: CHRISTIAN LEGAL ACTIVISM IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLAND. By Méadhbh McIvor. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. Near the end of Representing God: Christian Legal Activism in Contemporary England, legal anthropologist Méadhbh McIvor suggests that her interlocutors at the congregation of Christ Church and among the staff of Christian Concern/Christian Legal Centre (CLC) undertake neither a “straightforward embrace” nor an “outri…
The small space of Religion's remainder: On the precarities of the secular
Freedom, Salvation, Redemption: Theologies of Political Asylum
The politics of religious asylum is ripe for reassessment. Even as a robust literature on secularism and religion has shown otherwise over the past two decades, much of the discussion in this field presumes that religion stands cleanly apart from law and politics. This article makes the case for a different approach to religion in the context of asylum-seeking and claiming. In the United States, it suggests, the politics of asylum is integral to …
Politics of religious freedom in the Asia-Pacific: An introduction
This article introduces the main arguments of Beyond Religious Freedom and situates them in the context of this special issue on the politics of religious freedom in the Asia Pacific. It discusses the intensification of state-sponsored global religious interventionism that led me to write the book, and explains how the questions raised by the new global politics of religion came to seem urgent and important. It then presents the book’s central or…
After Religious Freedom
I want to thank the contributors to this forum. One of the most gratifying aspects of my job is learning from colleagues who have taken the time to respond to my work. I found very little to disagr
Narratives of de-secularization in international relations
This article explores how a particular narrative of de-secularisation, the ‘restorative narrative,’ is shaping US foreign religious policy and practice. It develops two arguments about efforts to stabilize religion as an object of governance and restore it to international politics and public life. First, this narrative re-instantiates and energizes particular secular-religious and religious-religious divides in ways that echo the narratives of s…
Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion
Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion
In recent years, North American and European nations have sought to legally remake religion in other countries through an unprecedented array of international initiatives. Policymakers have rallied around the notion that the fostering of religious freedom, interfaith dialogue, religious tolerance, and protections for religious minorities are the keys to combating persecution and discrimination. This book argues that these initiatives create the v…
Politics of Religious Freedom
In a remarkably short period of time, the realization of religious freedom has achieved broad consensus as an indispensable condition for peace. Faced with widespread reports of religious persecution, public and private actors around the world have responded with laws and policies designed to promote freedom of religion. But what precisely is being promoted? What are the cultural and epistemological assumptions underlying this response, and what …
Politics of Sectarianism: Rethinking Religion and Politics in the Middle East
Allegations of sectarian violence and discrimination saturate popular and scholarly accounts of developments in the mena region, particularly in the wake of renewed violence in Syria and Iraq. These accounts should sound a warning bell to scholars of religion and politics. The discourse of sectarianism is a modern discourse of religion-in-politics authorized by particular authorities in particular times and places. It relies on a fixed and stable…
Thinking about Religion, Law, and Politics in Latin America
Charles Taylor's A Secular Age is both important and insufficient to the study of religion, law, and politics in Latin America. While aspects of the North Atlantic experience of secularity have become globalized, shaping legal systems and other forms of collective governance around the world, local and regional histories and experiences often depart significantly from Taylor's account of secularity and conception of religion. Scholars of religion…
Alevis Under Law: The Politics of Religious Freedom in Turkey
Proponents of minority rights are calling for urgent measures to protect the Copts in Egypt, the Ahmadiyya in Pakistan, and the Baha'i in Iran to secure religious diversity, shield minority populations from discriminatory practices, and prevent the outbreak of religious violence. State governments, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and international tribunals promote religious liberalization as the antidote to the violen…
International politics after secularism
At the height of the influence of the secularisation thesis religion was understood to be absent from affairs of state and the law, including international politics and international law. As the critique of secularisation gained momentum this master narrative fell apart, and a new consensus began to take shape. The notion that religion had been ignored and should be ‘brought back in’ to International Relations took centre stage among many academi…
Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age
The history and politics of secularism and the public role of religion in France, India, Turkey, and the United States. It interprets the varieties of secularism as a series of evolving and contested
Iran, in Search of a Nonsecular and Nontheocratic Politics
The Iranian oppositional movement led by Mir Hussein Moussavi offers a glimpse of a third path that departs from a rigid dichotomy between secularism and political Islam and leads toward alternative religiopolitical possibilities not only for Iran but for other countries as well. How the West responds to this crisis, specifically to the democratic potential of nonsecular and nontheocratic forms of politics, is crucial
The Politics of Secularism in International Relations
Conflicts involving religion have returned to the forefront of international relations. And yet political scientists and policymakers have continued to assume that religion has long been privatized in the West. This secularist assumption ignores the contestation surrounding the category of the "secular" in international politics. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations shows why this thinking is flawed, and provides a powerful alter…
Political Islam and Foreign Policy in Europe and the United States
This paper is about the epistemological underpinnings of European and American foreign policy toward political Islam. European and American approaches to political Islam rely upon commonly held secular assumptions about religion and politics that have significant effects on foreign policy in Europe and the United States. Secularist epistemology produces an understanding of “normal politics” that lends a particular coloring to the politics of Musl…
Theorizing Religious Resurgence
Negotiating Europe: The politics of religion and the prospects for Turkish accession
This article examines the cultural basis of European opposition to Turkish accession to the European Union (EU). Most observers depict the cultural and religious dimensions of the European debate over Turkish accession as a disagreement between those who see Europe as a Christian ‘club’ and those open to a more religiously pluralistic European identity. However, polls suggest that cultural and religiously based doubts about Turkish accession reso…
A Political Sociology of the Middle East
The objective of Fred Halliday's The Middle East in International Relations is “to provide an introduction to the politics and, in particular, international relations of the Middle East, both through offering a history organized around particular explanatory themes and through examining a set of analytic issues in the politics of the region” (p. 13). Clearly an experienced writer, this is exactly what Halliday accomplishes. The Middle East in Int…
The International Politics of Secularism: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Islamic Republic of Iran
The Iranian people did not rebel against their own failed rulers but against ours. --Robert J. Allison In his study of nationalism and modern politics, Mark Juergensmeyer describes secular nationalism and religion as two opposing ideologies of order. (1) These ideologies, he explains, have a great deal in common. They conceive of the world in coherent, manageable ways; they both suggest that are levels of meaning beneath the day-to-day world that…
The Political Authority of Secularism in International Relations
Secularism is an important source of political authority in International Relations theory and practice. Secularists identify something called 'religion' and separate it from the domains of the state, the economy and science. This separation facilitates a consensus which is sustained by a powerful yet historically contingent set of beliefs, including secularism as the realization of God's will, secularism as the natural evolution toward universal…
Appropriating Islam: The Islamic Other in the Consolidation of Western Modernity
It is nearly impossible to find a contemporary map of the Mediterranean. Maps of southern Europe are easy to find, and one can purchase maps of Palestine, Israel and Egypt. North African maps, as well as continental African maps, abound. Maps of the Middle East, defined as Turkey, Egypt, and the countries to their east as far as the Indian border, are less prevalent, but available. Historical maps of the entire Mediterranean basin, of the Roman E…
The Impact of 9/11 on the Middle East
The Political Authority of Secularism in International Relations
Secularism is an important source of political authority in International Relations theory and practice. Secularists identify something called 'religion' and separate it from the domains of the state, the economy and science. This separation facilitates a consensus which is sustained by a powerful yet historically contingent set of beliefs, including secularism as the realization of God's will, secularism as the natural evolution toward universal…
Theorizing Religious Resurgence
International politics after secularism
At the height of the influence of the secularisation thesis religion was understood to be absent from affairs of state and the law, including international politics and international law. As the critique of secularisation gained momentum this master narrative fell apart, and a new consensus began to take shape. The notion that religion had been ignored and should be ‘brought back in’ to International Relations took centre stage among many academi…
Political Islam and Foreign Policy in Europe and the United States
This paper is about the epistemological underpinnings of European and American foreign policy toward political Islam. European and American approaches to political Islam rely upon commonly held secular assumptions about religion and politics that have significant effects on foreign policy in Europe and the United States. Secularist epistemology produces an understanding of “normal politics” that lends a particular coloring to the politics of Musl…
Negotiating Europe: The politics of religion and the prospects for Turkish accession
This article examines the cultural basis of European opposition to Turkish accession to the European Union (EU). Most observers depict the cultural and religious dimensions of the European debate over Turkish accession as a disagreement between those who see Europe as a Christian ‘club’ and those open to a more religiously pluralistic European identity. However, polls suggest that cultural and religiously based doubts about Turkish accession reso…
Narratives of de-secularization in international relations
This article explores how a particular narrative of de-secularisation, the ‘restorative narrative,’ is shaping US foreign religious policy and practice. It develops two arguments about efforts to stabilize religion as an object of governance and restore it to international politics and public life. First, this narrative re-instantiates and energizes particular secular-religious and religious-religious divides in ways that echo the narratives of s…
Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion
In recent years, North American and European nations have sought to legally remake religion in other countries through an unprecedented array of international initiatives. Policymakers have rallied around the notion that the fostering of religious freedom, interfaith dialogue, religious tolerance, and protections for religious minorities are the keys to combating persecution and discrimination. This book argues that these initiatives create the v…
Politics of Sectarianism: Rethinking Religion and Politics in the Middle East
Allegations of sectarian violence and discrimination saturate popular and scholarly accounts of developments in the mena region, particularly in the wake of renewed violence in Syria and Iraq. These accounts should sound a warning bell to scholars of religion and politics. The discourse of sectarianism is a modern discourse of religion-in-politics authorized by particular authorities in particular times and places. It relies on a fixed and stable…
The International Politics of Secularism: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Islamic Republic of Iran
The Iranian people did not rebel against their own failed rulers but against ours. --Robert J. Allison In his study of nationalism and modern politics, Mark Juergensmeyer describes secular nationalism and religion as two opposing ideologies of order. (1) These ideologies, he explains, have a great deal in common. They conceive of the world in coherent, manageable ways; they both suggest that are levels of meaning beneath the day-to-day world that…
Thinking about Religion, Law, and Politics in Latin America
Charles Taylor's A Secular Age is both important and insufficient to the study of religion, law, and politics in Latin America. While aspects of the North Atlantic experience of secularity have become globalized, shaping legal systems and other forms of collective governance around the world, local and regional histories and experiences often depart significantly from Taylor's account of secularity and conception of religion. Scholars of religion…
Politics of religious freedom in the Asia-Pacific: An introduction
This article introduces the main arguments of Beyond Religious Freedom and situates them in the context of this special issue on the politics of religious freedom in the Asia Pacific. It discusses the intensification of state-sponsored global religious interventionism that led me to write the book, and explains how the questions raised by the new global politics of religion came to seem urgent and important. It then presents the book’s central or…
After Religious Freedom
I want to thank the contributors to this forum. One of the most gratifying aspects of my job is learning from colleagues who have taken the time to respond to my work. I found very little to disagr
The Impact of 9/11 on the Middle East
Appropriating Islam: The Islamic Other in the Consolidation of Western Modernity
It is nearly impossible to find a contemporary map of the Mediterranean. Maps of southern Europe are easy to find, and one can purchase maps of Palestine, Israel and Egypt. North African maps, as well as continental African maps, abound. Maps of the Middle East, defined as Turkey, Egypt, and the countries to their east as far as the Indian border, are less prevalent, but available. Historical maps of the entire Mediterranean basin, of the Roman E…
The International Politics of Secularism: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Islamic Republic of Iran
The Iranian people did not rebel against their own failed rulers but against ours. --Robert J. Allison In his study of nationalism and modern politics, Mark Juergensmeyer describes secular nationalism and religion as two opposing ideologies of order. (1) These ideologies, he explains, have a great deal in common. They conceive of the world in coherent, manageable ways; they both suggest that are levels of meaning beneath the day-to-day world that…
The Political Authority of Secularism in International Relations
Secularism is an important source of political authority in International Relations theory and practice. Secularists identify something called 'religion' and separate it from the domains of the state, the economy and science. This separation facilitates a consensus which is sustained by a powerful yet historically contingent set of beliefs, including secularism as the realization of God's will, secularism as the natural evolution toward universal…
A Political Sociology of the Middle East
The objective of Fred Halliday's The Middle East in International Relations is “to provide an introduction to the politics and, in particular, international relations of the Middle East, both through offering a history organized around particular explanatory themes and through examining a set of analytic issues in the politics of the region” (p. 13). Clearly an experienced writer, this is exactly what Halliday accomplishes. The Middle East in Int…
Negotiating Europe: The politics of religion and the prospects for Turkish accession
This article examines the cultural basis of European opposition to Turkish accession to the European Union (EU). Most observers depict the cultural and religious dimensions of the European debate over Turkish accession as a disagreement between those who see Europe as a Christian ‘club’ and those open to a more religiously pluralistic European identity. However, polls suggest that cultural and religiously based doubts about Turkish accession reso…
Political Islam and Foreign Policy in Europe and the United States
This paper is about the epistemological underpinnings of European and American foreign policy toward political Islam. European and American approaches to political Islam rely upon commonly held secular assumptions about religion and politics that have significant effects on foreign policy in Europe and the United States. Secularist epistemology produces an understanding of “normal politics” that lends a particular coloring to the politics of Musl…
Theorizing Religious Resurgence
The Politics of Secularism in International Relations
Conflicts involving religion have returned to the forefront of international relations. And yet political scientists and policymakers have continued to assume that religion has long been privatized in the West. This secularist assumption ignores the contestation surrounding the category of the "secular" in international politics. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations shows why this thinking is flawed, and provides a powerful alter…
Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age
The history and politics of secularism and the public role of religion in France, India, Turkey, and the United States. It interprets the varieties of secularism as a series of evolving and contested
Iran, in Search of a Nonsecular and Nontheocratic Politics
The Iranian oppositional movement led by Mir Hussein Moussavi offers a glimpse of a third path that departs from a rigid dichotomy between secularism and political Islam and leads toward alternative religiopolitical possibilities not only for Iran but for other countries as well. How the West responds to this crisis, specifically to the democratic potential of nonsecular and nontheocratic forms of politics, is crucial
International politics after secularism
At the height of the influence of the secularisation thesis religion was understood to be absent from affairs of state and the law, including international politics and international law. As the critique of secularisation gained momentum this master narrative fell apart, and a new consensus began to take shape. The notion that religion had been ignored and should be ‘brought back in’ to International Relations took centre stage among many academi…
Alevis Under Law: The Politics of Religious Freedom in Turkey
Proponents of minority rights are calling for urgent measures to protect the Copts in Egypt, the Ahmadiyya in Pakistan, and the Baha'i in Iran to secure religious diversity, shield minority populations from discriminatory practices, and prevent the outbreak of religious violence. State governments, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and international tribunals promote religious liberalization as the antidote to the violen…
Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion
Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion
In recent years, North American and European nations have sought to legally remake religion in other countries through an unprecedented array of international initiatives. Policymakers have rallied around the notion that the fostering of religious freedom, interfaith dialogue, religious tolerance, and protections for religious minorities are the keys to combating persecution and discrimination. This book argues that these initiatives create the v…
Politics of Religious Freedom
In a remarkably short period of time, the realization of religious freedom has achieved broad consensus as an indispensable condition for peace. Faced with widespread reports of religious persecution, public and private actors around the world have responded with laws and policies designed to promote freedom of religion. But what precisely is being promoted? What are the cultural and epistemological assumptions underlying this response, and what …
Politics of Sectarianism: Rethinking Religion and Politics in the Middle East
Allegations of sectarian violence and discrimination saturate popular and scholarly accounts of developments in the mena region, particularly in the wake of renewed violence in Syria and Iraq. These accounts should sound a warning bell to scholars of religion and politics. The discourse of sectarianism is a modern discourse of religion-in-politics authorized by particular authorities in particular times and places. It relies on a fixed and stable…
Thinking about Religion, Law, and Politics in Latin America
Charles Taylor's A Secular Age is both important and insufficient to the study of religion, law, and politics in Latin America. While aspects of the North Atlantic experience of secularity have become globalized, shaping legal systems and other forms of collective governance around the world, local and regional histories and experiences often depart significantly from Taylor's account of secularity and conception of religion. Scholars of religion…
After Religious Freedom
I want to thank the contributors to this forum. One of the most gratifying aspects of my job is learning from colleagues who have taken the time to respond to my work. I found very little to disagr
Narratives of de-secularization in international relations
This article explores how a particular narrative of de-secularisation, the ‘restorative narrative,’ is shaping US foreign religious policy and practice. It develops two arguments about efforts to stabilize religion as an object of governance and restore it to international politics and public life. First, this narrative re-instantiates and energizes particular secular-religious and religious-religious divides in ways that echo the narratives of s…
Politics of religious freedom in the Asia-Pacific: An introduction
This article introduces the main arguments of Beyond Religious Freedom and situates them in the context of this special issue on the politics of religious freedom in the Asia Pacific. It discusses the intensification of state-sponsored global religious interventionism that led me to write the book, and explains how the questions raised by the new global politics of religion came to seem urgent and important. It then presents the book’s central or…
Freedom, Salvation, Redemption: Theologies of Political Asylum
The politics of religious asylum is ripe for reassessment. Even as a robust literature on secularism and religion has shown otherwise over the past two decades, much of the discussion in this field presumes that religion stands cleanly apart from law and politics. This article makes the case for a different approach to religion in the context of asylum-seeking and claiming. In the United States, it suggests, the politics of asylum is integral to …
“Lovingly, not legalistically”: Representing God in contemporary England
REPRESENTING GOD: CHRISTIAN LEGAL ACTIVISM IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLAND. By Méadhbh McIvor. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. Near the end of Representing God: Christian Legal Activism in Contemporary England, legal anthropologist Méadhbh McIvor suggests that her interlocutors at the congregation of Christ Church and among the staff of Christian Concern/Christian Legal Centre (CLC) undertake neither a “straightforward embrace” nor an “outri…
The small space of Religion's remainder: On the precarities of the secular
Law (21 works) · Political science (21 works) · Politics (19 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (12 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (10 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (10 works) · Secularism (10 works)