Department Chair and Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Sociology and Anthropology
Wes Markofski (Ph.D. Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison) is Chair and Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton College. An ethnographer and social theorist, his research centers on the study of politics, culture, science, and public religion.
His recently published work on American evangelical public and political engagement can be found in Political Power and Social Theory, Sociology of Religion, Religion & American Culture, and two Oxford University Press books: Good News for Common Goods: Multicultural Evangelicalism and Ethical Democracy in America (2023) and New Monasticism and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism (2015).
A new line of research in the sociology of science and religion, “Protecting Sacred Waters: Mobilizing Indigenous and Western Meanings of Science and Spirituality in the Battle over Line 3,” explores how Native American activists and allies mobilize scientific and spiritual-religious meaning and authority in environmental justice organizing and opposition to oil pipeline expansion across Anishinaabe lands in northern Minnesota.
At Carleton, Wes teaches courses in social theory, democracy and inequality, urban ethnography, sociology of religion, and introductory sociology.