Kelly J. Baker

Kelly J. Baker, Ph.D., is a freelance writer who covers religion, higher education, racism, gender, contingent labor, and popular culture for the past three years. She has a Ph.D. (2008) in American religious history from Florida State University and her academic scholarship included 14 journal articles and 39 conference presentations. She’s been researching and writing about white supremacy, white nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance for over 15 years.

Kelly is also the award-winning and bestselling author. My books include the Choice Outstanding Academic Title Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930 ( 2011); Grace Period: A Memoir in Pieces (2017) named one of the Best Books in New Religion Journalism of the Decade by Religion Dispatches; the INDIE Gold award-winner Sexism Ed: Essays on Gender and Labor in Academia (2018); 2021 Gold Medal Winner from the Florida Authors and Publishers Association (FAPA) President’s Book Awards The Zombies Are Coming: The Realities of the Zombie Apocalypse in American Culture (2020), and Final Girl: And Other Essays on Grief, Trauma, and Mental Illness (2020). Gospel According to the Klan is the first book to analyze the white religious nationalism of the 1920s Klan and the continued legacy of their particular form of white nationalism today. The Zombies Are Coming explores the connections between fantasies of the zombie apocalypse, guns, masculinity, and violence and the hidden consequences of zombie media. Sexism Ed documents the structural sexism of the academy.

Kelly's bylines have appeared at The New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, The Chronicle for Higher Education, and Religion & Politics.

Twitter: @kelly_j_baker

Sub-specialties:
women in higher education (including Title IX, contingent labor, campus sexual assault, sexism in academia, gender pay gap, and women in STEM), white supremacy and white supremacist/white nationalist movements, hate crimes, American religious history in the 20th and 21st centuries, apocalypticism in pop culture and religious culture