{"id":156426,"date":"2026-03-12T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=156426"},"modified":"2026-03-11T21:19:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T02:19:53","slug":"square-books-presents-amy-mcdowell-in-conversation-with-jodi-skipper-for-whispers-in-the-pews-wednesday-march-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/square-books-presents-amy-mcdowell-in-conversation-with-jodi-skipper-for-whispers-in-the-pews-wednesday-march-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Square Books presents Amy McDowell in conversation with Jodi Skipper for “Whispers in the Pews” Wednesday, March 18"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Amy McDowell in conversation with Jodi Skipper for Whispers in the Pews Wednesday, March 18 at 5.30pm @ Off Square Books<\/em>\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ole Miss associate professor Amy McDowell in conversation with Dr. Jodi Skipper for Whispers in the Pews, an exploration of the power of small talk in evangelical church communities, and a bottom-up explanation of Christian nationalism. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the book\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Small talk, whether enjoyed or despised, is often thought of as trivial and\u00a0largely useless. In churches across the South, however, it can be\u00a0surprisingly powerful. Whispers in the Pews <\/em>offers a bottom-up explanation\u00a0of Christian nationalism, exposing how small talk is utilized to construct an\u00a0appearance of social and political sameness in evangelical church\u00a0communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McDowell interviewed church attendees in a politically divided Mississippi\u00a0college town. Students, working class residents, and racial minorities alike\u00a0described the profound influence of this kind of normalizing small talk in their\u00a0congregation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By confining themselves to blander conversation topics, the church, which\u00a0prides itself on inclusivity, positions itself as welcoming to all. But by creating\u00a0an environment in which certain topics — border control, electoral politics,\u00a0race and gender — are discouraged from discussion, a false fa\u00e7ade is developed in which everyone is assumed to believe the same things, and any sort of debate is silenced.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the author <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Amy McDowell is an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Director of Queer Mississippi Histories Project at the University of Mississippi. Her ethnographic research on how religion and secularism collide in American culture has been published in leading sociology journals on race, religion, and gender and reprinted in best-selling anthologies for undergraduate students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the conversation partner <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jodi Skipper is a race and tourism scholar at the University of Mississippi. In her role as Professor of Anthropology and Southern Studies, she has collaborated with Behind the Big House, a slave dwelling interpretation program in North Mississippi. Based on that work, she has received a Mississippi Humanities Council Humanities Scholar Award, a Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship, the University of Mississippi\u2019s Diversity Innovator Award, the Sanford and Susan Thomas Senior Professor Research Award in the Social Sciences, and Campus Compact\u2019s Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award. She co-edited (with Michele Coffey) the book Navigating Souths: Transdisciplinary Explorations of a US Region in 2017 and, in 2022, published an autoethnography, Behind the Big House: Reconciling, Slavery, Race and Heritage in the U.S. South<\/em>. It tells the story of a southern academic navigating life and a career in landscapes that honor the Confederacy while silencing slavery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whispers in the Pews\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>
by Amy McDowell\u00a0
$30.00\u00a0
Publisher: New York University Press ISBN:9781479827633\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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