Sarah MacMillen, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Sociology Department

Office: 511 College Hall
412.396.1952
macmillens@duq.edu

Sarah MacMillen, Assistant Professor, began her appointment in Duquesne’s Sociology Department in fall 2006. She has an abiding interest in the political, religious and social institutions, and writing in the areas of social theory, religion, cultural sociology and political sociology.  She has published and taught courses on religion, social theory, political theory, the American Catholic Church, peace studies, and feminist thoughts.

B.A., Classics & Religion, Boston University, 2000;
M.A., Sociology, University of Notre Dame, 2002
Ph.D., Sociology, University of Notre Dame,  2006

Research, Publications and Service

Professor MacMillen writes within the tension between critical and phenomenological approaches to religion. She co-authored a book on Conversion to Catholicism, Real Stories of Christian Initiation (Liturgical Press, 2006).  Her dissertation was an examination of bereavement support groups and class and religious differences in grieving individuals.  Her theoretical influences include Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt, and Simone Weil.  Her current research interests include investigation of a peace group in Israel-Palestine and a monograph on Gillian Rose, Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil.

Dr. MacMillen feels that the religious call to ethics and the sociological vocation to praxis are one and the same. As an organic intellectual (in Gramsci’s terms), she is committed to bringing working-class narratives and experiences into her assessment of critical theory and Marxist approaches. With this vocation she teaches courses including Classical Sociological Theory, Introduction to Peace and Justice, Sociology of Catholicism, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Sex and Gender, and Social Policy and Theories of Multiculturalism.  She has had memberships in the American Sociological Association, the Society for Phenomenology and Human Sciences, the American Academy of Religion, the Weil Society, and she has served on the program committee for the Hannah Arendt Circle.  Professor MacMillen also enjoys playing soccer, her clarinet, running, swimming, and singing.

Statement

Contemporary scholars in international relations, like Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, see religion and culture as the sources of conflict in the current geo-political climate. From my point of view, it follows that religion and culture must also be a part of the solution. Policy Center graduates need cultural and religious awareness for successful frameworks in conflict mediation and reconciliation in today’s world. Policy Center graduates also benefit from a careful contextual reading of theory and are better scholars and policy-makers with these cultural and theoretical sensitivities.