Department of Sociology
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
Telephone: none given
dawnem@berkeley.edu
Dawne Moon grew up in Rochester, NY, but calls Chicago home since she earned a BA from the University of Chicago in 1991 and a PhD from the same place in 2000. Her main interest is in how people develop the ideas that mean the most to them, and the impact of those ideas on social life. Sexuality, religion and political culture have been her main areas of inquiry. Her book, God, Sex and Politics: Homosexuality and Everyday Theologies (Chicago, 2004) uses ethnographic material gathered in two United Methodist congregations to explore how people in these religious communities developed their disparate ideas about the proper Christian response to homosexuality. By observing group processes and individuals' ways of thinking through the issue, she shows that these debates are so explosive because of their underlying implications about who or what God is and the relationship between politics and righteousness.
She is also interested in how language and emotions contribute to people's understandings of right and wrong, and the effects of these lines of thought in everyday life and everyday politics. She has two newer projects afoot: one further explores the nature of politics, community and ethics by exploring various American Jewish views about anti-Semitism. The other explores the tensions in political and social liberalism, particularly in alternative sexual communities and everyday notions of "safety."
