Department of Sociology University of Oregon
 

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Marion S. Goldman

Professor

Address:
729 PLC
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403
Phone: (541) 346-5167
Fax: (541) 346-5026
Email: mgoldman@uoregon.edu

My research focuses on gender and society, when possible through methodological combinations of documentary and historical research, field methods, and interviewing. In Gold Diggers and Silver Miners, a Hamilton Prize winner, I explored the relationships between frontier prostitution and community life. My recent book , Passionate Journeys, dealt with the successful American women who left the mainstream to follow Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to his communal city in central Oregon. Currently, I am considering the ways in which men develop personal spirituality and redefine masculinity at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.

Research Interests

  • gender
  • historical methods
  • psychoanalytic theory
  • new religious movements
        

Teaching Areas

  • sociology of religion
  • cults and social movements
  • historical methods
  • gender

Courses Taught

SOC 311 Intro to Sociological Method
SOC 410 Cults/New Religious Movements
SOC 461 Sociology of Religion
SOC 612 Overview of Sociological Method
SOC 613 Historical Method in Sociology
SOC 661 Issues in Soc. Of Religion

Selected Books

1999 Passionate journeys: Why successful women joined a cult. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

1995 Sex, schemes, and sanctity: Religion and deviance. Greenwich, CT: JAI press, sponsored by the Association for the Sociology of Religion

1987 Advances in psychoanalytic sociology. Melbourne, FL: Kreiger publishing company.

1981 Gold diggers and silver miners: Prostitution and social life on the Comstock Lode. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, Women and Culture Series.

1972 A portrait of the black attorney in Chicago. Chicago: American Bar Foundation Press.

Selected Articles

2006 Cults, new religions, and the spiritual landscape. Journal for the scientific study of religion 45: 86-96.

2004 "Dueling symbols: A review essay." Contexts: A journal of the American Sociological Association. 3:60-62.

2003 "When leaders dissolve: Solutions to controversy and stagnation in the Rajneesh movement." In Controversial New Religions. Edited by James Lewis. New York: Oxford University Press.

2002 "Voicing spiritualities: Anchored composites in research on religion." In Reshaping the Ethnography of Religion edited by James Spickard and Shawn Landres. New York: New York University Press.

2001 "The ethnographer as holy clown: Ignoring dangers in the field." In Reflexive Ethnography edited by Lewis Carter and David Bromley, Greenwich, CT: Jai Press, pp. 53-76.

1999 "Enduring affiliation and gender doctrine for Shiloh Sisters and Rajneesh sannyasins." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 38: 411-423.

1996 "Alice Miller's contributions to the sociology of religion." In Religion, Society, and Psychoanalysis edited by Donald Capps and Janet Jacobs. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

1995 "Continuity in collapse: Departures from Shiloh." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 34: 342-353.

Education

Ph.D. -- University of Chicago