Julie Byrne holds the Monsignor Thomas J. Hartman Endowed Chair in Catholic Studies and Professor of Religion at Hofstra University. Before arriving in New York in September 2006, she taught at Duke University (2004-2006) and Texas Christian University (2000-2004). In 2018 she was awarded a grant by the Public Scholar program of the National Endowment for the Humanities for work on her third book. Her second book, The Other Catholics: Remaking America’s Largest Religion, was published by Columbia University Press in 2016. Her first book, O God of Players: The Story of the Immaculata Mighty Macs, was published by Columbia University Press in 2003. In addition to Catholic Studies, Byrne writes and teaches subjects in American religion from gender and race to method and theory. Her courses include "Religions in the U.S.," "What is Catholicism?", "The Jesus Class," "Demonology," "Religion & Media" and "Fieldwork in American Religion." Dr. Byrne is active in the American Academy of Religion, now serving on the program committee. She also publishes popular articles and speaks frequently to the media. She can be found at Facebook (/julie.byrne.3388) and Twitter @JulieByrneHUCS

Thomas J. Davis is Professor of Religious Studies at IUPUI, where he has served as the Thomas H. Lake Scholar of Religion and Philanthropy, chair of the Religious Studies Department, Associate Dean for Academic Programs, and Dean. He has been associated with the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture since 1989 (with a three-year hiatus from 2015-2018), when he was appointed the founding managing editor of Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation. His writings span a variety of genres, from academic works to memoirs/creative non-fiction to novels. His academic interests include the history and thought of the Protestant Reformation, images of John Calvin in American culture, and religion and philanthropy. His current work focuses on the writings of American novelist Marilynne Robinson.

Tracy Fessenden teaches in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. There she has served as Associate Director and Faculty Head in Religious Studies. Prior to receiving the Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia she studied literature at Yale University. Her work focuses gender, race, and sexuality in American religious history; religion and American literature and the arts; and the relationship between religion and the secular in American law and public life. She is the author of Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature (Princeton UP, 2007; paperback 2013), co-editor of The Puritan Origins of American Sex: Religion, Sexuality and National Identity in American Literature (Routledge, 2001) and Religion, the Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference (Columbia UP, 2013), and General Editor of the North American Religions series at New York University Press.

Philip Goff has been Co-editor of the journal since 2000. He is the Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture and Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies at IUPUI. Specializing in American religious history, he is the author or editor of over forty books and journal volumes and more nearly 200 articles, chapters, and papers. As Director of the CSR&AC, he oversees research and public teaching programs centered on understanding the relation of religion to other aspects of American culture. Recent edited books include The Bible in American Life (with Arthur Farnsley and Peter Thuesen), Religion and the Marketplace in the United States (with Jan Stievermann and Detlef Junker), and The New Evangelical Social Engagement (with Brian Steensland). Goff has served as a legal consultant for church-state cases, co-authored amicus briefs for cases before the Federal Supreme Court, and been an expert witness in legal cases involving religious groups. His current research projects are the history of religious radio during the golden age of that medium and a study of Protestantism in American history and life.

Laura S. Levitt is Professor of Religion, Jewish Studies and Gender at Temple University where she has served as chair of the Department of Religion and directed both the Women’s Studies and the Jewish Studies Programs. She is the author of American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust (2007) and Jews and Feminism: The Ambivalent Search for Home (1997). She is an editor of Judaism Since Gender (1997) and Impossible Images: Contemporary Art after the Holocaust (2003). Her current project, “Evidence as Archive” builds on her prior work in feminist theory and Holocaust studies to consider the relationship between material objects held in police storage and artifacts housed in Holocaust collections. With David Watt and Tracy Fessenden, she is an editor of The North American Religions Series at NYU Press.

Dr. Elaine Peña is Professor of Performing Arts, American Culture Studies, and Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. Elaine's research centers around the study of borders, the study of religion, and the study of hemispheric Latinx performance. Trained between Performance Studies and Cultural Anthropology, her work looks carefully at the production and transmission of knowledge from a range of vantage points—from the printed word to embodied practice to the built environment. She is the author of two acclaimed books Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe (University of California Press, 2011) and ¡Viva George! Celebrating Washington’s Birthday at the U.S.-Mexico Border (University of Texas Press, 2020). She also edited Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s Ethno-techno: Writings on performance, activism, and pedagogy (Routledge, 2005) and contributed to Gómez-Peña Unplugged: Texts on Live Art, Social Practice and Imaginary Activism (2008-2020) (Routledge, 2020).

Matthew Avery Sutton is the Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor of History at Washington State University. His latest book is Double Crossed: The Missionaries who Spied for the US during the Second World War (Basic Books, 2019). He is the author of American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), Jerry Falwell and the Rise of the Religious Right: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012), and Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Harvard University Press, 2007). He has published articles in diverse venues ranging from the Journal of American History to the New York Times and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the US Fulbright Commission, and the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation. In 2016 he was appointed a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow.

Peter J. Thuesen is Professor and former-Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at IUPUI. He has been the Co-editor of Religion and American Culture since 2006. A historian of American religion and of the Christian tradition since the Reformation, he was educated at Princeton University (PhD and MA) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (BA). He joined the IUPUI faculty in 2004 after previous appointments as Assistant Professor of Comparative Religion at Tufts University (2001-2004) and Assistant Editor of The Works of Jonathan Edwards and lecturer in American religious history at Yale Divinity School (1998-2001). He has been a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (Mellon Fellow), the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Louisville Institute, and the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism.

Joseph L. Tucker Edmonds is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at Indiana University’s School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI and the Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies and Economics from Brown University, his Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and his PhD in Religious Studies from Duke University. Professor Tucker Edmonds’ research interests are black and womanist theologies, alternative Christianities in the black Atlantic, and the role of scripture in African and African American religious traditions. Joseph has received grants from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning, the Fund for Theological Education, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Tucker Edmonds’ upcoming book, The Other Black Church: Alternative Christian Movements and the Struggle for Black Freedom, will be published in the fall of 2020.