Profile
Bobby C. Alexander, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Sociology in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas.
He is a member of the faculty in the Sociology Program and the program in Public Policy and Political Economy. Alexander received his Ph.D. and Master of Philosophy from Columbia University.
He also holds a Ph.D. and a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York. His B.A. was awarded by Baylor University.
His research area is social-scientific study of religion with a specialization in sociology and anthropology of religion.
Past Work Experience
College Master and Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Studies, School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, UTD, 1999-2002
Senior Lecturer in Sociology, School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, UTD, 1997-2002
Senior Lecturer, School of Arts and Humanities, UTD, 1997-1999
Lecturer, School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, and Sometime Lecturer, School of Arts and Humanities, UTD, 1993-1997
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Social-Scientific Study of Religion, Department of Religious Studies, Dedman College, Southern Methodist University, 1986-1993
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Program in Religion, Department of Philosophy, Hunter College of The City University of New York, 1985-1986
Adjunct Lecturer in Religious Studies, Program in Religion, Department of Philosophy, Hunter College of The City University of New York, 1981-1985
Awards
Coolidge Fellow, CrossCurrents: Association for Religion and Intellectual Life, Research Colloquium with support from Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary, New York, July 5-28, 2006.
Rockefeller Foundation Residency
Alexander was one of 130 out of over 930 applicants selected to the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Study and Conference Center Residency program in Bellagio, Italy, July 15-August 13, 2004.
Junior Scholar Award and Research Grant
Given by the Southwest Commission on Religious Studies (Southwest region of the American Academy of Religion), 1989-1990 (research and book on television religion).
Research Assistance Grant awarded by the American Academy of Religion, 1988-1989 (research and book on television religion).
Student Choice Teaching Award, given by the students of the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, UTD, Spring 2001, and Fall 1996.
Professional Organizations
American Academy of Religion
Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
Courses
“Immigrants, Immigration, and American Society”
Graduate and undergraduate courses on “Race, Ethnicity, and Community”
“Religion in U.S. Society” (focusing on new immigrants and their religions)
“Professional Writing for Sociology”
“Religions”
“Fieldwork in the Hispanic Community”
Research
Alexander is currently working on a book monograph, tentatively titled The Contribution of Religion to the Transformation of Transnational Migration through Change in Gender Roles for Mexican Women. The research examines ways in which Pentecostal religion in particular provides leverage to women as agents making decisions inside overlapping social arenas, principally church networks and families, that contravene traditional culture roles. He also is working on related journal articles. The Rockefeller Foundation and CrossCurrents: Association for Religion and Intellectual Life have provided support for these publications.
In addition, he is collaborating with Professors Jeff Dumas, Jennifer Holmes, Doug Dow, and Danielle Lavin-Loucks UTD’s School of EPPS on research and publications on the challenges presented by legal requirements for asylum to performance dimensions of credibility in the documentation process. The research is support by a grant from the Overbrook Foundation to the Human Rights Initiative, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Dallas, where Alexander is conducting research among its potential clients and staff.
Under review is Alexander’s co-authored book, for which he is one of the two principal authors, analyzing barriers to transfer to four-year colleges and universities encountered by Latino and Latino immigrant first-generation two-year college students. The book is based on ethnographic research conducted alongside the grant project funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Post-secondary Education (FIPSE), for which he was Project Director.
Selected Invited Lectures
“The Role of a Mexican Protestant Church and Its U.S. Missions in Transnational Migration.” Joint Session of the Latino / a Religion, Culture, and Society Group and the Evangelical Theology Group, American Academy of Religion. San Antonio, Texas. November 21, 2004.
“New Challenges for Community Colleges: Latino Immigrants and the Transfer Process.” Conference on “Community Colleges and Latino Educational Opportunity” sponsored by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University and supported by the Pew Hispanic Center. October 11, 2003.
“Social Mobility and Cultural Dissonance in a Transnational Mexican Pentecostal Church: A Case Study of the Dallas Mission.” Religion in Latin American and the Caribbean Group, American Academy of Religion. Toronto, Canada. November 24, 2002.
“Social Mobility and Cultural Dissonance among Mexican Pentecostals: A Case Study of a Transnational Dallas Mission.” Society for the Anthropology of Religion, co-sponsored by the American Anthropological Association and the American Academy of Religion. Cleveland, Ohio. April 6, 2002.
Grants
U.S. Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE), 1999-2004. Alexander was the Project Director of a five-year, $600,000 grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Post-secondary Education (FIPSE): “An Ethnographic/Social Science/Community-Based Model to Recruit and Retain Hispanics.”
He secured a $5,000 grant from the Dallas Women’s Foundation to UTD in support of the FIPSE Project.
The grant partnered UTD and Mountain View College in the Dallas County Community College District in order to address a congressional priority to retain Hispanic students who are enrolled in two-year colleges, transfer them to four-year colleges and universities upon the completion of the Associate’s degree, and graduate them with a Bachelor’s from four-year colleges and universities.
The project utilized an ethnographic field station in Oak Cliff, Dallas’s largest concentration of Hispanics and Latino immigrants.
There students were trained in ethnographic methods in order to study their own families’ level of education, jobs, and place of residence.
The goals were to show students the advantages of higher education to their long-term job prospects and to demonstrate the relevance of academic research to the advancement of the Hispanic community via analysis of immigrant families’ histories of education, jobs, and resources.
Alexander recently secured grants from the Dallas Women’s Foundation ($19,125), the Harold Simmons Foundation ($20,000), and TXU Electric Delivery ($1,000) awarded to the Oak Cliff Center for Community Studies, on whose Board of Directors he serves as President.
The grants fund the operating costs and programs of the center, including scholarly research, on which Alexander is collaborating with Dr. Laura Gonzalez, Executive Director of the Center.
Books
Televangelism Reconsidered: Ritual in the Search for Human Community. 1994. Atlanta: Scholars Press of the American Academy of Religion, Studies in Religion Series, No. 68; in the catalogue of Oxford University Press.
An analysis of the conflicting uses of television religion by its constituency within the context of U.S. society (self-legitimation as a minority religious group, and adaptation of members of this group to a secularized society).
Victor Turner Revisited: Ritual As Social Change. 1991. Atlanta: Scholars Press of the American Academy of Religion, Academy Series: Dissertation Series, No. 74; in the catalogue of Oxford University Press.
An application of Victor Turner’s theory of ritual “anti-structure” (ritual’s dialectical relation to social structure) to ritual in inner-city black churches.
Books in Progress:
The Contribution of Religion to the Transformation of Transnational Migration through Change in Gender Roles for Mexican Women
New Challenges for Community Colleges: Transfer Barriers for Hispanics, co-authored with Victor Garcia, Laura Gonzalez, Dan O'Brien, and Geoffrey Grimes. Under review.
Book Chapters
“Televangelism Reconsidered: Ritual within a Larger Social Drama.” 1997. In Rethinking Media, Religion, and Culture, edited by Stewart M. Hoover and Knut Lundby. Sage Publications, Inc.: Thousand Oaks, California.
“Ritual and Current Studies of Ritual: Overview.” 1997. In Anthropology of Religion: A Handbook, edited by Stephen D. Glazier. Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut.
Academic Journals
Co-authored with Professors Victor Garcia, Laura Gonzalez, Dan O’Brien, and Geoffrey Grimes, “New Challenges for Community Colleges: Hispanic Students, Immigrants, and the Transfer Process,” April, 2007. The Journal of Hispanic Higher Education (a journal published by Sage Publications).
“A Pentecostal-styled Mexican Mission in Dallas: An Illustration of Religious Diversity among New Latino Immigrants.” Listening: Journal of Religion and Culture, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Fall 1998):175-187.
“Introduction.” Listening: Journal of Religion and Culture, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Fall 1998):155-161. Alexander served as Editor for this special edition of Listening devoted to the “Religions of America’s Immigrants.”
“An Afterward on Ritual in Biblical Studies.” Semeia: Journal for Biblical Interpretation, Vol. 67 (Fall 1995):209-225. The editor of the special issue of this refereed journal solicited my non-peer-reviewed essay as a response to the other articles, which were given to “Passages, Transformations, and Processes: Ritual Approaches to Biblical Texts.”
Rejoinder to Don Hendelman’s review of my book, Victor Turner Revisited: Ritual As Social Change (see book above), Journal of Ritual Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer 1994):161-163.
“Correcting Misinterpretations of Turner’s Theory: An African-American Pentecostal Illustration.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 30, No. 1 (March 1991):26-44.
“Turner’s Definition of Ritual Reconsidered: Grotowski’s Experimental Theater as Secular Rituals of Spiritual Healing.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 3, No. 1, Issue 31 (Winter 1991):62-83.
“Pentecostal Ritual Reconsidered: ‘Anti-structural’ Dimensions of Possession.” Journal of Ritual Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter 1989):109-128.
Articles in Progress:
“The Role of Institutional Religion in Changing Gender Roles for Migrant Women: A Transnational Mexican Pentecostal Church.”
“Mobility and Cultural Dissonance in a Transnational Mexican Pentecostal Church”
“The Role of Institutional Religion in Transnational Migration: A Mexican Pentecostal Church in the U.S.”
Scholarly Encyclopedias
“Rite of Passage,” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Forthcoming.
“Ceremony” (updated). 2005. Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition, edited by Lindsay Jones, et al. Vol. 3. Pages 1512-1519. The Macmillan Publishing Company.
“Jerry Falwell,” Encyclopedia of Protestantism, edited by Hans Hillerbrand. Vol. 2. Pages 738-739. Routledge, 2003.
“Ceremony.” 1987. The Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade, et al. Vol. 3. Pages 179-183. New York: The Macmillan Publishing Company.
Selected Review
Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal / Charismatice Spirituality by Daniel E. Albrecht, Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series 17, Sheffield , England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999. In Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Vol. 23, No., 2 (Fall 2001):303-306.
- Updated: April 13, 2007
