Andrew Monteith
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Department: Religious Studies
Email: amonteith@elon.edu
Phone number: (336) 278-5712
Brief Biography
Andrew Monteith joined Elon University in 2018. He is an enthusiastic teacher who values building mentorship and other meaningful relationships with students. His courses focus on helping students further develop their existing critical thinking skills in a supportive climate that recognizes their own intellectual agency and personal goals. Monteith teaches on a range of topics but social power, secularism, and American culture are frequent themes.
News & Notes
Education
Indiana University, 2018. PhD. (Religious Studies; American Studies minor)
Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2011. M.A. (Religious Studies)
The Ohio State University, 2006. B.A. (History)
Courses Taught
Frequently taught courses:
REL 1120 - Religion and Power
REL 1840 - Christianity and Power (formerly "Christian Traditions")
REL 1860 - Spirituality and the Secular (formerly "Irreligious and Secular Traditions")
REL 3300 - Religion and American Popular Culture
REL 3360 - Religion and War in America
REL 3736 - Moral Domination & Subversion
Research
Monteith is currently working on two separate research projects. The first project examines how eugenics and other cultural forces shaped moral norms about disability. This is a long-term project that is still in beginning stages.
A second, smaller project developed accidentally. While working through archival materials related to eugenics, Monteith came across a Chicago man's autobiographical account of his sex life, which he wrote from prison around 1930. The author explains the complicated feelings surrounding his polyamorous gay marriage, which took place in a Christian boarding school around 1923. This project is nearing final stages and will hopefully become an article.
Publications
Andrew Monteith's first book, Christian Nationalism and the Birth of the War on Drugs (New York University Press, 2023), explains how religion, race, and US colonialism germinated the early Drug War during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It asks readers to think of "religion" as something that shapes social thought and behavior in far-reaching ways, drawing on primary source material from colonial missionaries, Bureau of Indian Affairs agents, eugenicists, Christian activists, and the League of Nations. In June 2024 the British Association of American Studies awarded it the Arthur Miller Institute Best First Book prize.
In 2023, Andrew Monteith and Jessica Carew organized the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society's biannual symposium. Their topic "Race and American Civil Religion" has developed into a special journal issue of American Religion, which Monteith and Carew are currently coediting.
Monteith is also under contract with Routledge for a textbook tentatively titled Religion and Power, which introduces undergraduate students.to how religion has mattered for power structures like colonialism, race, gender, and so on, as well as how "power" can operate beyond its recognized manifestations (such as "war" or "law"). The book aims to help students understand both "religion" and "power" as categories that describe wide swaths of human activity.
Monteith has published with The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, and American Religion.