Rachel Rinaldo
Associate Professor

Office: KTCH 266

Office Hours: Tuesdays from 9 am to 11 am

Rachel Rinaldo (PhD University of Chicago, 2007) is a cultural sociologist interested in gender, globalization, social change, religion, and qualitative methods, with a special focus on the developing world and Muslim societies in Southeast Asia. She has conducted fieldwork in Indonesia since 2002. Her first book, Mobilizing Piety: Islam and Feminism in Indonesia (Oxford 2013) is an ethnographic study of Muslim and secular women activists in the country with the world's largest Muslim population. She has published her work in journals such as听Gender & Society,听Qualitative Sociology,听and听Social Forces. Over the past decade, she has done research on changes marriage and divorce in urban Java, the contemporary art scene in Indonesia, and gender and family dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is also interested in the development of qualitative methods. In 2022-2023 she was a Fulbright Scholar in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, conducting a large-scale study of women and work. She is currently the Faculty Director of the Center for Asian Studies.听

Selected Publications:听

Rachel Rinaldo and Ian Michael Whalen. 2023. "Amplifying Inequalities: Gendered Perceptions of Work Flexibility and the Division of Household Labor during the COVID-19 Pandemic." Gender, Work & Organization (online first):听https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gwao.13026听

Elisabeth Becker, Rachel Rinaldo, and Jeff Guhin. 2023. "Classifying Muslims: Contextualizing Religion and Race in the United Kingdom and Germany." Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion (online first):听https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gwao.13026听

Rachel Rinaldo and Jeff Guhin. 2022. "How Interviews Work: Ethnographic Interviews and Meso-level Public Culture." Sociological Methods and Research 51(1): 34-67.听https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0049124119882471

Rachel Rinaldo and Jeff Guhin. 2019. "How and Why Interviews Work: Ethnographic Interviews and Meso-Level Public Culture. Sociological Methods and Research (online first):听

Rachel Rinaldo. 2019. "Obedience and Authority among Muslim Couples: Negotiating Gendered Religious Scripts in Indonesia." Sociology of Religion 80(3): 323-349.听

Manisha Desai and Rachel Rinaldo. 2016. 鈥淩eorienting Gender and Globalization: Introduction to the Special Issue.鈥澨Qualitative Sociology听39/4.听

Orit Avishai, Afshan Jafar, and Rachel Rinaldo. 2015. 鈥淎 Gender Lens on Religion.鈥澨Gender & Society听29/1.

Rachel Rinaldo. 2014. "Pious and Critical: Muslim Women Activists and the Question of Agency." Gender & Society 28(6): 824-246.听

Rachel Rinaldo. 2013.Mobilizing Piety: Islam and Feminism in Indonesia.听New York: Oxford University Press.

Public Sociology:

  • Working Mothers and the COVID-10 Pandemic in the US:

  • "How a Growing Number of Women Clerics are Challenging Traditional Narratives" The Conversation (2017)

  • An American in Jakarta" (2015)听Gender & Society blog

    • 听听

  • "Islam and Feminism are not at Odds" (2015) Bitch Magazine Online

  • "Pious and Critical: Muslim Women Activists in Indonesia" (2015) Gender & Society blog