Diane Winston

Diane Winston holds the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the University of Southern California. Her work is at the intersection of religion, media and culture, and she teaches in the departments of religion, journalism, and communication. Her most recent book, Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan’s Evangelical Vision explores how the news media normalized religiously-coded neoliberalism. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, and The Chronicle of Higher education among other places.

Essays

Cars from the 1940s are parked in front of a church during a drive-in church service

Viewing American history through the lens of religious innovation

Diane Winston | May 6, 2026

Believer, religious studies, and the public

Laura Harrington, Samira K. Mehta, Hussein Rashid, Lisa H. Sideris and Diane Winston | July 6, 2017

Reflections on summer reading

Dr. Richard Amesbury, Jason C. Bivins, Edward E. Curtis, IV, Tracy Fessenden, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, David Kyuman Kim, Cecelia Lynch, John Lardas Modern, Justin Neuman, John Schmalzbauer and Diane Winston | August 31, 2011

Christianity and the crash

Anthea Butler, John B. Cobb, Jr., William E. Connolly, Harvey Cox, Michele Dillon, Michael S. Horton, D. Stephen Long, Rachel M. McCleary, Sarah Posner, James K. A. Smith, Mark C. Taylor, Jonathan L. Walton and Diane Winston | December 23, 2009

Mobilizing social science for the public good.

The Social Science Research Council, an independent, international nonprofit, mobilizes necessary knowledge for the public good by supporting scholars worldwide, generating new research across disciplines, and linking researchers with policymakers and citizens.