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Sonja Anderson

Associate Professor of Religion, Religion

Sonja Anderson (UCLA, B.A.; University of Notre Dame, M.T.S.; Yale University, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.) teaches courses in ancient Christianity and Judaism, religious violence, gender and Catholicism, apocalypticism, and religion and medicine. Her current book project, Idol Talk: False Worship in the Early Christian World, will be published with Edinburgh University Press and explores how ancient Christians and Jews used idolatry polemic to claim a distinctive identity for themselves over against their pagan peers and how scholarly narratives have replicated this claim to uniqueness. Her training is in ancient biblical and parabiblical texts, but lately she is interested in the history of Catholic book publishing in 20th–21st-century America. Her favorite place to be is in conversation with students and colleagues about the weirdness of how we imagine ancient religion. She is a Benedictine oblate of Saint John’s Abbey.


At Carleton since 2016.

Current Courses

  • Fall 2025
    RELG 100: Dying for God
  •  
    RELG 213: Religion, Medicine, and Healing
  • Winter 2026
    RELG 110: Understanding Religion
  •  
    RELG 162: Jesus, the Bible, and Christian Beginnings
  • Spring 2026
    RELG 322: Apocalypse How?
  • Spring 2027
    RELG 233: Gender and Power in the Catholic Church
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Curriculum Vitae

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