About

Professor Leerom Medovoi is a faculty member in the Department of English and serves as the Chair of the Program in Social, Cultural and Critical Theory. His research and teaching interests include the historical co-determinations of religion and race, theories of political and economic theology, and the politics of secularism. He has authored the book Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity and has served as the Principal Investigator for Mellon Foundation awards on topics such as 'Religion, Secularism and Political Belonging' and 'Neoliberalism at the Neopopulist Crossroads.' Additionally, he is a co-editor of a collection titled Religion, Secularism and Political Belonging, which explores the shifting politics of religion and secularism across various regions. His recent publication, The Inner Life of Race: Bodies, Souls and the History of Racial Power, examines race as a technology of power rooted in theological concepts and religious techniques of governing spiritual threats.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Law
• Sociology
• Gender studies
• Philosophy
• Psychology

Selected publications

• The Inner Life of Race

  2024-08-20

  book1st authorCorresponding

  In The Inner Life of Race , Leerom Medovoi turns away from conventional views of race as a politics of the phenotypical body to theorize race instead as a politics of populational threat. Racism’s genealogy, argues Medovoi, invokes longstanding theological distinctions between the body and the soul. While the body can be seen and marked, the soul signals potentially threatening interiorities: dangerous intentions, beliefs, or desires. Race is the power-effect of reading the body in order to police the political threat of the soul. Medovoi’s genealogy begins with medieval deployments of inquisition and confession to wage war against heretics, infidels, and their threat to the salvation of souls. In early modern Spain, these pastoral technologies of power catalyzed the invention of race as a language for the danger of formerly Jewish and Muslim converts. Medovoi shows how this discourse expanded into anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity throughout the colonial world and modern Europe, laying the foundation for racialized capitalism and liberal governmentality. Medovoi weaves histories of color-line racism, nativism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and anticommunism into a pathbreaking account of the political work populational racism accomplishes.

  PublisherDOI

• The Inner Life of Race

  2024-08-09

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In The Inner Life of Race, Leerom Medovoi turns away from conventional views of race as a politics of the phenotypical body to theorize race instead as a politics of populational threat. Racism’s genealogy, argues Medovoi, invokes longstanding theological distinctions between the body and the soul. While the body can be seen and marked, the soul signals potentially threatening interiorities: dangerous intentions, beliefs, or desires. Race is the power-effect of reading the body in order to police the political threat of the soul. Medovoi’s genealogy begins with medieval deployments of inquisition and confession to wage war against heretics, infidels, and their threat to the salvation of souls. In early modern Spain, these pastoral technologies of power catalyzed the invention of race as a language for the danger of formerly Jewish and Muslim converts. Medovoi shows how this discourse expanded into anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity throughout the colonial world and modern Europe, laying the foundation for racialized capitalism and liberal governmentality. Medovoi weaves histories of color-line racism, nativism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and anticommunism into a pathbreaking account of the political work populational racism accomplishes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Inner Life of Race

  2024-01-01

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Inner Life of Race

  2024-09-13

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• <i>Life in Plastic: Artistic Responses to Petromodernity</i> ed. Caren Irr

  American Literary History · 2023-05-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 4. Neoliberal Political Theology

  2021-03-30

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Duke University Press eBooks · 2021

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  PublisherDOI

• Keyword: Fundamentalism

  Duke University Press eBooks · 2021 · 8 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Philosophy
  • Political Science
  PublisherDOI

• NEOLIBERAL POLITICAL THEOLOGY

  2021-03-08

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• INTRODUCTION:

  2021-03-08

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Marcia Klotz

  3 shared

• Elizabeth Serena Bentley

  1 shared

• Elizabeth Bentley

  1 shared

• ELIZABETH BENTLEY

  1 shared

• Keith Feldman

  University of Missouri–Kansas City

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Principal Investigator for Mellon Foundation awards on 'Reli…
• Principal Investigator for Mellon Foundation award on 'Neoli…