2022 Winner: Elizabeth Dolfi
Dissertation Title: “Trafficking in Restoration: Building God’s Kingdom in the Evangelical Anti-trafficking Movement.”
Interview with Elizabeth Dolfi
Interview by Daniel Vaca, Department of Religious Studies, Brown University.
1) About the dissertation:
2) One of the things that the jury admired about your dissertation is the way you speak to an array of conversations in the study of American religion in really rich ways. I'm thinking not just about scholarship on evangelicalism but also on humanitarianism, philanthropy, gender, sexuality, and more. Can you talk about some of the conversations you were most interested in addressing, and how your work adds to them?
3) Although your work is very much grounded in your field site and the scholarship you're building on, I think you also engage theories or theorists in such a way that your work can speak in generative ways to scholars outside the study of American religion. What theoretical issues or theories did you draw upon or build on in ways that you found helpful, or which you hope will be helpful for others? (e.g., secularism, law, policy, etc.)
4) What would a book look like?
5) Your dissertation features you embedded in evangelical anti-trafficking settings, and one organization in particular: Restore NYC. I wonder if you could tell us about how you went about your ethnography in that setting and some of the challenges you faced in it or unexpected discoveries you made.
6) In your ethnographic work, you had such an array of interlocutors, some of whom appear more than others. Can you tell us about any who stand out for you as especially compelling or challenging?
7) What advice would you give someone writing a dissertation about religion in the Americas?