Religion & American Neoliberalism on a College Campus: Navigating the Grey Areas

The development of American culture over time with its focus on the progression of the individual has thoroughly shaped higher education institutions in the United States. The importance of the idea of the individual to education institutions affects every facet of academic and social life at American colleges. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the following presentation will focus on how religious students relate to the dominant culture of Union College and specifically how they relate to the emphasis placed on the individual over religious community in this culture. Through participant observation in Christian, Muslim and Jewish student groups and spaces as well as in person interviews with both students and administrators of religious life, I will attempt to evaluate what it is like to be a devoutly religious person at a modern, neo-liberal, American higher education institution. I will outline the struggles that religious students face in remaining devoutly religious and the changes that happen in their sense of religion and understanding of what it means to be a religious person as they move through the college experience. This study has broader implications for questions about inclusion and diversity in American educational institutions.