Uta Balbier

Uta Balbier is Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow of St. Anne’s College. Her research focuses on the transnational history of the 20th century United States, particularly on how religion shaped, and was shaped by, America’s engagement with the world. Trained in European and North American history, she explores the relationship between politics and culture, the sacred and profane, and the transnational interconnectivities of performance, practices, and beliefs in the 20th century. Her most recent monograph is Altar Call in Europe: Billy Graham, Mass Evangelism, and the Cold-War West (Oxford University Press, 2021). The book challenges assumptions about a uniquely American relationship between politics, consumerism, and religion, and argues against an exceptional American religious modernity. The project she will pursue at the Koch History Centre explores the interplay between religion, state authority, and capitalism in the 20th Century United States through the history of the Coca-Cola company. It traces the history of the company from its genuine religious roots in Southern Methodism in the late 19th century to its civil religious role in American corporate imperialism during the Cold War.