Prof. Sarah Barringer Gordon

Professor Gordon is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and is a widely recognized scholar and commentator on religion in American public life and the law of church and state. She researches and teaches extensively in American constitutional history, religion and religious experience, westward expansion, and property. Professor Gordon has been a frequent guest on news and talk shows. Her book, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth‐Century America (2002) won the Mormon History Association’s and the Utah Historical Society’s Best Book awards in 2003. She is currently working on a new book about religion and law in the twentieth century, titled The Spirit of the Law, which will be published by Harvard University Press. Professor Gordon is the recipient of numerous prizes and fellowships and spent the 2004‐05 academic year at University College London. She also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the Law School from 2000‐2002, and is on the advisory boards of the National Constitution Center, the American Society for Legal History, Vassar College, and the Mormon History Association. In 2004, she received the Robert A. Gorman Teaching Award. Professor Gordon holds a secondary appointment in the History Department, where she teaches American religious and constitutional history.