Anna Sun's teaching and research interests include sociology of knowledge, sociology of religion, classical and contemporary social theory, and sociology of East Asia. Her dissertation was entitled Confusions over Confucianism: Controversies over the Religious Nature of Confucianism, 1870-2007. In 2003-04 she was a Mellon Dissertation Fellow at the Institute for Historical Research at the University of London, and in 2005-06 she was a Marilyn Yarbrough Dissertation Fellow at Kenyon College.

As a co-principal investigator of the Baylor University research project "The Empirical Study of Religions in China" (ESRIC), funded by the John Templeton Foundation, 2006-09, Sun has been studying the revival of Confucianism as a religion in contemporary China, as well as the larger issue of the classification of Chinese religions.

In addition to her scholarly publications, Sun's work has also appeared in Harvard Review (2000) and The London Review of Books (2004). A MacDowell Colony Fellow in 2001, she is currently a Consulting Editor of The Kenyon Review. Since 2006, Professor Sun has been the Faculty Advisor for the Kenyon sociology club, the Sociology Student Advisory Board (SSAB).

Education

Ph.D. Princeton University
M.A. Princeton University
B.A. UC Berkeley

Selected Publications

"To Become a Confucian." Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion, ed. Lewis R. Rambo and Charles E. Farhadian, Oxford University Press (forthcoming).

"Confucianism." Sage Encyclopedia of Global Religion and Society, ed. Wade Clark Roof and Mark Juergensmeyer, Sage Publications (forthcoming).

"The Fate of Confucianism as a Religion in Socialist China: Controversies and Paradoxes." State, Market and Religions in Chinese Societies, ed. Fenggang Yang and Joseph B. Tamney, Brill, 2005.

Courses Taught

SOCY 103 Introduction to Sociology: Society and Culture
SOCY 249 Knowledge of the Other: Journey to the East
SOCY 450 French Social Theory
SOCY 361 Classical Social Theory: Marx, Weber, Durkheim
SOCY 465 Sociology of Knowledge: The Social Life of Knowledge in the Social Sciences and Humanities