Cara Burnidge is an associate professor of religion in the Department of Philosophy & World Religions at the University of Northern Iowa. Her research and teaching interests include the history of religion in the United States, method and theory in Religious Studies, and the study of religion, secularism, and empire. Her essays “Religious Influences on U.S. Foreign Policy” and “U.S. Foreign Relations and American Religious Liberalism” are available in full text through Oxford University Press and her book, A Peaceful Conquest: Woodrow Wilson, Religion, and the New World Order, is available from the University Chicago Press. Cara discusses both of these works (and more!) in her interview with Research on Religion podcast.

In Fall 2019, Dr. Burnidge is teaching two sections of Religions of the World for first-year students and Religion & Politics. When she’s not in the classroom, she’s either reading and writing about her current research interests–white liberal Protestants, the Social Gospel, and the biopolitics of urban interventionism–or advising and mentoring students, including two student organizations being the change they wish to see in the world: Northern Iowa Feminists and UNI MSA.