Gaston Espinosa, Ph.D.

Professor Gastón Enrique Espinosa is the Arthur V. Stoughton Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College, Co-Editor of the Columbia University Press Series in Religion and Politics, and author and/or editor of nine books and over 150 articles and scholarly publications and 200 lectures around the world.  

His research, writing, and teaching examines the intersections of American religions, politics, popular culture, and social change.  

Professor Espinosa has won or been named to over fifty fellowships, honors, distinctions, and awards including The Cesar Chavez Dissertation Year Fellow at Dartmouth College, The Huggins-Quarles Award from the Organization of American Historians (OAH), The Charlotte Rachel Newcombe Fellow at Princeton, a U.C. President's Dissertation Fellow, a Yale Program in Religion and American History Fellow, the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at Northwestern University, an NEH Fellow at the NHC Institute for Advanced Studies in Raleigh-Durham, NC, a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Excellence in Religion and Politics at the University of Munster, Germany, and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Politics at Princeton University.   

He has a passion for teaching and instilling curiosity, creativity, and the cultivation of the intellectual life and social responsibility. To this end, he teaches courses on American Religions and Politics, U.S. Latino Religions and Politics, Religion, Race, and the Civil Rights Movement (Black, Mex.-Amer., Native American), Religion, Politics, and Global Violence, Mystics, Prophets, and Social Change, Race and Religion in Hollywood Film, and Hip Hop, Religion, and Revolution.

In his service to the academy, his department, and the Claremont Colleges, he served two-terms as President of La Comunidad of Hispanic Scholars of Religion at the American Academy of Religion (AAR), two-terms on the American Academy of Religion Committee on Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Professions (CREM), Chair of the CMC Department of Religious Studies, Chair of the 5 Claremont Colleges Intercollegiate Program in Religious Studies, Chair & Co-Chair with Lenny Fukshansky (Mathematics) of the 7Cs Committee on Religious Affairs (CORA), and Co-Chair with Daniel Livesay (History) of the CMC Racial-Ethnic General Education Proposal Committee.  He was also selected by CMC to be a fellow in the Claremont Faculty Leadership Program (CFLP).

In addition to his research on religion, race, history, and popular culture, he has also carried out extensive national social science research over the past twenty-five years and is a leader in the field of U.S. Latino religion, presidential electoral politics, and activism.  From 1999-2002, he served as project manager and director of research of $1.3 million The Pew Charitable Trusts Hispanic Churches in American Public Life study.  Since 1998, he has directed 8 social science research surveys:  Latino Pentecostal and Methodist Women in Ministry Survey 1998 (n = 200), Hispanic Churches in American Public Life National Survey 2000 (n = 2,310), Latino Religious Leaders Survey 2001 (n = 205), Latino Civic Leaders Survey 2001 (n = 229), Latino Religions and Politics National Survey 2008 (n = 1,102), Latino Religions and Politics National Survey 2012 (n = 1,000), Latino Muslims in American Public Life Survey 2014 (n = 560), and Latino Religions and Politics National Survey 2020 (n = 1,292). 

His work has appeared in numerous scholarly publications including, The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, The Annals of American Political and Social Sciences, Social Compass: International Review of the Sociology of Religion, and The Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Religion.

He has given almost 200 scholarly presentations at universities and centers around the world, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Dartmouth, Chicago, Notre Dame, Northwestern, UCLA, USC, UC Berkeley, UCI, University of Heidelberg (Germany), University of Munster (Germany), University of Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), Science Po (CERI) (France), Ecoles Institute (France), University of Paris (VII, XII), Uppsala University (Sweden), Lund University (Sweden), Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, I.I. Mechnikov National University of Odesa, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, BBC, National Public Radio (NPR) and the National Press Club in Washington, DC., among other places.  His thoughts and opinions have been cited numerous times in the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, and many other newspapers and media outlets across the U.S.

He is the author/editor of nine books, including Protestants on Screen: Religion, Politics and Aesthetics in European and American Film (Oxford), Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action (Harvard), William J. Seymour and the Origins of Global Pentecostalism: A Biography and Documentary History (Duke), Religion, Race, and Barack Obama's New Democratic Pluralism (Routledge), Religion, Race, and the American Presidency (Rowman & Littlefield), Religion and the American Presidency: George Washington to George W. Bush (Columbia), Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism and Culture (Duke), Rethinking Latino/a Religions and Identity (Pilgrim), and U.S. Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States (Oxford).

His next edited book on Religion, Race, Gender and the American Presidency, 2000-2020 is slated for release in 2026 and he is currently working on several other books and research projects on Latino religions and politics in American public life, religion and the civil rights movement, and Hip Hop, religion, and social change.

On a more personal note, he loves reading and writing, traveling, the outdoors, sports, dancing (Ballroom, Latin, Country), spin cycling, the gym, global cultures, watching Shark Tank and reading Entrepreneur magazine, exploring forests and rivers in the high Sierra mountains, and creating new inventions and innovative programs, and bringing scholars together to discuss major problems and issues that vex contemporary society (e.g., presidential politics and religion, the war in Ukraine, religion & violence, race, religion and Hollywood film, and hip hop, religion, and social change).