Eileen Luhr

Eileen Luhr, Ph.D.

Title

Credentials

Contact Information

Fields of Interest

Professor Luhr’s research interests include cultural and religious history, politics, modern United States history, and history pedagogy. Her first book, Witnessing Suburbia (University of California Press, 2009), explored the intersection of conservatism, religion, and suburbanization by demonstrating the ways in which conservative religious beliefs helped reshape the political and cultural landscape of the late twentieth century. Her current project, Pilgrims’ Progress: Globalization and the American Religious Imagination, examines how religious beliefs get re-invoked, re-shaped, and re-imagined within new economic and cultural contexts. The first published chapter from the project examines lifestyle spirituality—including surfing and yoga—in the city of Encinitas, California in order to understand how a cosmopolitan religious imaginary took root in American culture during the recent past. Other chapters in the project include topics such as the missionary work of Paramahansa Yogananda and the progressive political and spiritual beliefs of the owners of Dr. Bronner’s, a San Diego-based soap company.

Professor Luhr also serves as the advisor and acting coordinator for the Social Science Credential Program. In addition to teaching the capstone course for credential student in the subject matter program, she teaches courses in United States religious and cultural history, the junior-level seminar History and Theory (History 302), and the introductory seminar for incoming graduate students. 

Publications

(in-progress) “Pilgrims’ Progress: ‘Efficient America,’ ‘Spiritual India,’ and America’s Transnational Religious Imagination.” 

“Seekers, Surfers, and Yogis: The Progressive Religous Imagination and the Cultural Politics of Place in Encinitas, Californa,” American Quarterly (December 2015), 1169-93.

“Cold War Teenitiative: American Evangelical Youth and the Developing World in the Early Cold War,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth (Spring 2015), 295-317.

“A Revolutionary Mission: Young Evangelicals and the Language of the Sixties,” in In and of the Times: New Perspectives on American Evangelicalism and the 1960s, edited by Axel Schaefer (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013)

“Marketing Religion,” in Clones, Fakes and Posthumans, eds. Philomena Essed and Gabriele Schwab, Rodopi (2012)

“Punk, Metal, and American Religions” in Religion Compass (Blackwell Publishing Ltd.) 4, no. 7 (July 2010)

Witnessing Suburbia: Christian Conservatives, “Family Values,” and the Cultural Politics of Youth, University of California Press (2009)

“Metal Missionaries to the Nation: Christian Heavy Metal Music, ‘Family Values,’ and Youth Culture, 1984-1994,” American Quarterly (March 2005)

Interviews with Professor Luhr

• Interview with Brittany Shoot (April 2009)
• Excerpted interview at The Believer (January 2010)

Pedagogy & Encyclopedia Entries

• (with Tim Keirn) “Subject Matter Counts: The Pre-Service Teaching and Learning of Historical Thinking,” The History Teacher vol. 45, no. 4 (August 2012)
• (with Tim Keirn and students Manoj Choudhary and Miguel Escobar) “Raising the Visibility of Asia in History Teacher Preparation: An Assignment for Pre-Service Teachers,” The History Teacher vol. 45, no. 4 (August 2012)
• “Suburbanization,” in the Encyclopedia of Religion in America, edited by Charles Lippy and Peter Williams. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2010.
• United States History and Culture: A Curriculum for 11th Grade Classrooms (2004)

Courses 

Undergraduate Program

• Undergraduate major core & capstone courses: Methodologies of History (History 301) History and Theory (History 302), Senior Seminar (History 499), Social Science for Teachers (History 401)
• Upper-division elective courses: California History (History 473), Religion in American History (History 484), United States since 1968 (History 380b)

Graduate Program

• Historical Thinking and the Discipline of History (History 501), Graduate Writing Seminar (History 673), Literature of United States History (History 510)