Elizabeth Bucar

Professor of Religion; Dean's Leadership Fellow
Liz Bucar is a leading expert in religious ethics. Her research and writing covers a wide range of topics—from sexual reassignment surgery to the politics of religious clothing–but generally focuses on how a deeper understanding religious difference can change our sense of what is right and good. She is the author of four books, including her most recent, Stealing My Religion: Not Just Any Cultural Appropriation (Harvard 2022) and the award-winning Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress (Harvard, 2017). At Northeastern Bucar teaches courses on sexual ethics, Islam, cultural appropriation, and the popular comparative religion program in Spain that includes a 150-mile hike on the Camino. Her public scholarship has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, and Teen Vogue. Bucar is Director of Sacred Writes: Public Scholarship on Religion, a grant-funded project that provides support, resources, and networks for scholars of religion committed to translating the significance of their research to a broader audience.
Fellowships and Awards
- Position: PI
Title: Sacred Writes: Public Scholarship on Race, Justice, and Religion
Purpose: This new grant will fund four initiatives that build organizational capacity while explicitly centering anti-racism.
Funding agency: The Henry Luce Foundation
Dates: July 2022-June 2024
Total award: $450,000 - Position: PI
Title: Sacred Writes, Public Scholarship on Religion (title of original proposal was Fit to Print)
Purpose: Train scholars to do public-facing scholarship and create media partnerships
Funding agency: The Henry Luce Foundation
Dates: June 2018–June 2022
Total award: $750,000 - Position: Resident Fellow
Title: Writing Beyond the Academy
Purpose: Writing retreat at Collegeville Institute, MN
Funding agency: Collegeville Institute
Date July 20-29, 2019
Total award: room, board, and travel - Position: Senior Fellow (PIs are Charles Mathewes and Paul Dafydd Jones, University of Virginia)
Title: Religion and Its Publics, a University of Virginia Research Project
Purpose: Explore various publics of religious studies to increase impact of scholarship
Funding agency: The Henry Luce Foundation
Dates: Sept. 2016–June 2019
Total award: $1,000,000 - Position: PI
Title: Reporting Religion
Purpose: Increase religious literacy of journalists through a workshop and course development
Funding agency: Luce/ACLS Program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs
Dates: Sept. 2016–May 2018
Total award: $60,000 - Position: Fellow (PIs are William Schweiker, University of Chicago and Günter Thomas, Ruhr-University Bochum)
Title: Enhancing Life Early Career Fellowship
Purpose: Support research on “enhancing life”
Funding Agency: John Templeton Foundation
Dates: July 2015–August 2017
Total award: $4.6 million
Amount of my award: $50,000 - Position: Fellow (PI Christian Miller, Wake Forest University)
Title: Theology of Character Fellowship
Purpose: Support research on character formation
Funding Agency: John Templeton Foundation
Dates: June 2012–June 2013
Total award: $403,000
Amount of my award: $57,000 - Position: Postdoctoral Fellow
Title: American Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
Purpose: Supported research leave
Funding Agency: American Association of University Women
Dates: August 2011–June 2012
Total award: $35,000 - Position: Postdoctoral Fellowship
Title: Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs
Purpose: Supported research and teaching residency
Funding Agency: Georgetown University
Dates: August 2006–May 2007
Total award: $49,000
Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).
The Islamic Veil: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2012).
Religious Ethics in a Time of Globalism: Shaping a Third Wave of Comparative Analysis, ed.
E. Bucar and A. Stalnaker (New York: Palgrave, 2012).
Creative Conformity: The Feminist Politics of U.S. Catholic and Iranian Shi‘i Women
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011).
Does Human Rights Need God? ed. E. Bucar and B. Barnett (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2005).
Stealing My Religion: Not Just Any Cultural Appropriation (Harvard University Press, 2022)
-
Education
Ph.D., 2006, Religious Ethics,
The University of Chicago -
Contact
-
Address
433 Renaissance Park
360 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115 -
Dialogues

Selling Spirituality
PHIL 1133
Focusing on two popular practices–yoga and meditation–this course explores the ethics of western commodification of eastern spiritual practices. Topics covered include; whether cultural appropriation applies to spiritual/religious borrowings; debates over whether yoga or meditation are properly understood as religious, philosophical, or something else; how and to whom these practices are marketed; and what ethical harms are created by the mindfulness industry. This course includes readings, informal and formal research and writing assignments, and experiential mindfulness learning assignments. The student will learn how to think critically about the marketing of mindfulness as universal and secular. PHIL 1133 is required for NU’s Mindfulness Minor. Course Attributes: NUpath Interpreting Culture (IC) and NUpath Engaging Difference and Diversity (DD).