A longer, downloadable CV, is also available.
REBECCA BARRETT-FOX
EDUCATION
Ph.D. in American Studies (with honors), University of Kansas
M.A. in American Studies, University of Kansas
B.A. in English & Human Studies (summa cum laude), Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA
PUBLICATIONS
BOOK
God Hates: Westboro Baptist Church, American Nationalism, and the Religious Right. University Press of Kansas, 2016.
EDITORSHIP
Editorial Board Chair, Journal of Hate Studies, 2025-present
Guest Editor, Journal of Hate Studies, “Hate and Heritage” Special Issue. May 2017.
ARTICLES and CHAPTERS
“’I Did What I Thought Needed to be Done’: How Army of God Crafts Anti-Abortion Justified Homicide Arguments on YouTube,” Journal of Religion and Violence. Online First, September 24, 2025.
“Teaching Online in the Age of COVID.” Forum contribution. Journal of American Studies , no. 1 (2021): 212-241.
with Andrew K. T. Yip. “Crosses and Crossroads: Purity and Intersectionality in Conservative American Christianity’s Erasure of Queer Believers.” Intersecting Religion and Sexuality. Edited by Sarah-Jane Page and Andrew K. T. Yip. Brill, 2020.
“How the Coronavirus Pandemic Will Change Our Future Teaching.” FORUM contribution. Religion and American Culture 30, no. 2 (2020): 147-186.
“Prayer and Religious Observance.” Legislating Morality: Debating the Morality of Popular U.S. Laws and Policies. Edited by Don Haider-Markel. ABC-CLIO, 2020.
“Constraints and Freedoms in Conservative Christian Women’s Lives,” Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches, 2nd edition. Edited by Ayu Saraswati, Barbara Shaw, and Heather Rellihan. Oxford University Press, 2020 [1st edition, 2017].
with Matthew Costello, James Hawdon, and Colin Bernatzky, “The Perpetuation of Online Hate: A Criminological Analysis of Factors Associated with Participating in an Online Attack.” Journal of Hate Studies 15, no 1. 2019: Article 8.
“A King Cyrus President: How a Donald Trump Presidency Reasserts Conservative Christians’ Right to Hegemony.” Humanity & Society. 42, no. 4 (2018): 502-522.
“Comic, Tragic, and Burlesque Burkean Responses to Hate: Notes from Counterprotests of Antigay Pickets.” Contention 6, no. 1 (2018): 23-48.
with Matthew Costello, Rebecca Barrett-Fox, Colin Bernatzky, James Hawdon, and Kelly Mendes. “Predictors of Viewing Online Extremism among American Youth.” Youth & Society, 52, no. 5 (2018).
with Jennifer Chappell Deckert, Jennifer C. Greenfield, Suzanne Kucharczyk, and Johanna M. Thomas. “400 Words at a Time: Transforming Our Writing in Academia.” Writing as a Way of Staying Human in a Time That Isn’t. Edited by Nate Mickelson. 2018. Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2018.
“The Bible and the Religious Right.” Handbook of the Bible in America. Edited by Paul Gutjahr. Oxford University Press, 2017.
“Christian Romance Novels: Inspiring Convention and Challenge,” in Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom? Edited by William Gleason and Eric Selinger. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press, 2016.
“The 4th R: Encountering Conservative Christianity in the Classroom,” Thought & Action 32. No. 1 (2016): 32-50.
“The Rise of Anti-Gay Religious Right Activism in the U.S.: A Review of Major Sociological
Theories,” in Globalized Religion and Sexual Identity: Policies, Voices and Contexts. Edited by Heather Shipley. Boston: Brill, 2014.
“Congress at the Kitchen Table: Religious Right Applications of Moral Home Economics to
Federal Economic Policy,” in The Great Recession in Fiction, Film, and Television: Twenty First Century Bust Culture. Edited by Kirk Boyle and Daniel Mrozowski, 211-232. New York: Lexington Books, 2013.
“Anger and Compassion on the Picket Line: Ethnography and Emotion in the Study of Westboro Baptist Church,” Journal of Hate Studies 9, no. 1 (2010/11): 11-32.
“Hope Faith and Toughness: An Analysis of the Christian Hero” in Empowerment versus Oppression: 21st Century Views of Popular Romance Novels. Edited by Sally Goade, 93-102. New Castle, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007.
“Tunnel of Reification: How the Tunnel of Oppression Reaffirms Righteousness for Members of
Dominant Groups,” Radical Teacher 80 (2007): 24-29.
“Remodeling the ‘University of Destruction’: Conflicts between Academic Workers and Conservative Christians in American Universities,” Proteus: A Journal of Ideas 23, no. 2 (2006): 1-8.
“Higher Love: What Women Gain from Christian Romance Novels,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 4 (Summer 2003).
SELECTED ENTRIES and POPULAR WRITING
“College Is About Community, Not Just Courses. That’s a Challenge For Faculty This Fall.” EdSurge. September 1, 2020.
“Discrimination as Love: Asbury, BYU, and LGBTQ+ Students.” Righting America. March 13, 2020.
“Ask the Expert: Religiosity.” SociologicalYou: NextGen Introductory Sociology. Edited by Angela Thompson and Keith Whitworth. Fort Worth, TX: United Instructors and Textbook Authors Co-op, 2018.
“Youth are Fleeing Anti-LGBTQ+ Churches.” Righting America. June 28, 2018.
“Hate Groups,” in The American Middle Class: An Economic Encyclopedia of Progress and Poverty. Edited by Robert S. Rycroft. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2017.
“God Hates, Part Two.” Righting America. October 24, 2017.
“God Hates, Part One.” Righting America. October 19, 2017.
“The Religious Right: Everything Rests on Everyone Being Straight.” Righting America. August 14, 2017.
“A Friendly Welcome to a Hate-Filled Church,” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 3, 2017.
“The Theology of Westboro: The ‘World’s Meanest Church’ is More than Picket Signs,” Religion Dispatches, September 2, 2016.
“The Author’s Corner with Rebecca Barrett-Fox,” interview with John Fea, The Way of Improvement Leads Home, August 25, 2016.
“7 Women Scholars on the Gender Divide in Religious Studies, the Power of Mentors, and Leading While Female.” [Wendi Adamek, Nancy Ammerman, Elaine Howard Ecklund, Serene Jones, Peggy Levitt, Laura Maffly-Kipp, and Ann Taves]. Religion Dispatches. November 21, 2015.
“God Hates Nags: Why in God’s name is Westboro Baptist Protesting Kim Davis?” Religion Dispatches, October 19, 2015.
“KIM DAVIS CAUSED GAY MARRIAGE! Westboro Baptist Church and Religious Anti-Gay Politics,” Interview by Kelsy Burke, Girl w/Pen, a blog of The Society Pages, September16, 2015.
“When Congregation-based Activism is… Complicated,” Studying Congregations, August 11, 2015.
“The Americanization of Religious Minorities,” Entry in the Theory and Religion Series of Religion Bulletin. March 25, 2015.
“American Family Association,” “Baptism,” “Covenant Marriage,” and “Family Research Council,” Social History of American Families. Edited by Marilyn J. Coleman and Lawrence H. Ganong. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Reference. 2014.
“When the Founder Dies: Westboro Baptist Church in the Afterman of Pastor Fred Phelps’ Passing.” Interview by David G. Bromley, World Religions and Spiritual Project, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014.
“Duck Dynasty Patriarch, Hero of the Christian Right,” Religion Dispatches, December 23, 2013.
“A Response to ‘Evidentiary Boundaries and Improper Interventions: Evidence, Implications, and Illegitimacy in American Religious Studies,” Bulletin for the Study of Religion, July 29, 2013.
“Christian Romance Novels,” The Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception. Edited by Dale C. Alison, Jr., et al. Berlin: Verlag de Gruyter, 2013. Choice Outstanding Academic Title.
“A Bill Passes, Westboro Baptists Shrug,” Religion Dispatches, August 8, 2012.
“Gay-Hating Church Burns ‘Idols’: A Report,” Religion Dispatches, September 13, 2010.
BOOK REVIEWS
Nahban-Warren, Kristy. Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland. Reading Religion. (2023).
Wilde, Melissa J. Birth Control Battles: How Race and Class Divided American Religion. Feminist Encounters. 6 no. 1: article 15. (2022).
Kamali, Sara. Homegrown Hate: Why White Nationalists and Militant Islamists are Waging War against the United States. Reading Religion. November 2021.
Burridge, Richard A. and Jonathan Sacks. Confronting Religious Violence: A Counternarrative. Reading Religion. January 2021.
Phelps-Roper, Megan. Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church, Kansas History. (Spring 2021).
Johnson, Jessica. Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire, Reading Religion. (2018).
Fea, John. Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, Reading Religion. (2018).
Berry, Damon. Blood & Faith: Christianity in White Nationalism, Sociology of Religion 79 no. 3: 384-385. (2018).
Antony Alumkal, Paranoid Science: The Christian Right’s War on Reality, Contemporary Sociology 47 no. 5: 555-556. (2018).
David Weaver-Zercher. Martyrs Mirror: A Social History. American Studies 56:3-4 (2018).
Matthew Avery Sutton and Darren Dochuk, editors. Faith in the New Millennium: The Future of Religion and American Politics, Reading Religion. (2016).
Alison Collis Greene, No Depression in Heaven: The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Transformation of Religion in the Delta. Reading Religion. (2016).
Lisa S. Shaver, Beyond the Pulpit: Women’s Rhetorical Roles in the Antebellum Religious Press.Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies 45 no. 3 (2014): 194-196.
Clara S. Lewis, Tough on Hate? The Cultural Politics of Hate Crimes Legislation, American Studies 53 no. 4 (2014): 142-143.
Susan Crawford Sullivan, Living Faith: Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty, American Studies 53, no. 3 (2014): 92-93.
Thomas R. Pegram, One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth and Decline of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and Arthur Goldwag, The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right, Journal of Hate Studies 10, no. 1 (2012), 221-229. [Review essay].
Tobin Shearer Miller, Daily Demonstrators: The Civil Rights Movement in Mennonite Homes and Sanctuaries, Journal of American History 99, no. 2 (2012): 662-663.
Robert Wuthnow, Red State Religion: Faith and Politics in America’s Heartland, Christian Century (August 13, 2012): 40-41.
Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, Journal of Communication and Religion 35, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 93-96.
Mark D. Naison, White Boy, Radical Teacher 71 (Winter 2004): 10-11.
HONORS, GRANTS, and FELLOWSHIPS
Peace Fellow, Elizabethtown College, October 2021
New Scholar Award, National Education Association, March 2017, for a publication that “offers practical approaches to improving teaching and learning at the college level”
“Rohwer Reconstructed: Interpreting Place through Experience”, National Parks Service, January 2015-February 2017
“Radicalization on the Internet: Virtual Extremism in the U.S. from 2012 – 2017”, National Institute of Justice, January 2015-January 2018
Title IV-E Grant, “Academic Partnership in Public Child Welfare”, State of Arkansas, August 2014-May 2016
The Bible in American Life Conference, Indiana University-Purdue, University Indianapolis’ Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, August 2014
William Coolidge Fellowship, CrossCurrents Research Colloquium sponsored by Auburn Seminary, Columbia University, Jewish Theological Seminaries, and Union Theological Seminary, July 2014
CONSULTING and SELECTED MEDIA APPEARANCES
- Guest on Collegeland, a podcast focused on higher education amid the COVID pandemic
- Guest on More and More Every Day, a teaching -ocused podcast
- Media consultant for The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed regarding online teaching
- Consultant for communities threatened by WBC pickets (2010-present)
- Guest on Up to Date with Steve Kraske,“Westboro and the Religious Roots of Hate,” 2016
- Media consultant for New York Times regarding the June 2016 Pulse shooting
- Scholarly consultant for Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, 2015
- Media consultant for The Oregonian regarding Westboro Baptist Church protests
- Media consultant for This Land magazine article on Religious Right politics
- Media consultant for New York Times, Al Jazeera America, CNN, and The Huffington Post regarding the death of Fred Phelps
- Guest on State of Belief [radio] to discuss death of Fred Phelps, March 22, 2014
- Media consultant for Pacific Standard on Dave Ramsey and Christian financial planning, November 2013
- Guest on Up for Debate on Moody Bible Radio to discuss Christian romance novels, February 9, 2013
- Subject of Evangelical Press Association First Place and Associated Church Press Award of Merit (2nd place) interview on researching Westboro Baptist Church in Sojourners magazine, May 2012
- Media consultant for New York Times coverage of Snyder v. Phelps
- Media consultant for Topeka Capitol-Journal coverage of Snyder v. Phelps
SERVICE and MEMBERSHIPS
2025-present, Editorial Board Chair, Journal of Hate Studies
2016-Present Host, the Any Good Thing writing challenge
2018-2020 Features editor, Religious Studies Project
2017-2021 Editorial board member of Reading Religion
2011-2019 Book review editor, Journal of Hate Studies
2015-2016 Women and Gender Studies Director, Arkansas State University
Occasional reviewer: American Studies, Approaching Religion, Girl: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Journal of Homosexuality, Journal of Popular Romance Studies, Oxford University Press, Social Problems, Teachers College Record, Teaching Sociology, University of Nebraska Press, University of North Carolina Press
Please see my longer CV for a list of presentations, invitited lectures, and workshops as well as academic and professional positions held.
Rebecca Barrett-Fox 