Dochuk's research deals primarily with the United States in the long twentieth century, with emphasis on the intersections of religion, politics, and culture in national life. He teaches courses that span the entire post-Civil War period but focus particularly on post-1890 developments. He also offers thematic courses on U.S. religious history, political history, American society in the 1960s, 1970s, and the Cold War period, and the history of energy in American life.
Dochuk has written widely on modern U.S. history. His most recent book is Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America (Basic Books, 2019). He is also the author of From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (Norton, 2011), winner of the Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians (awarded for dissertation manuscript), John H. Dunning Prize from the American Historical Association, and Ellis Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians. He has edited and co-edited several books, including Beyond the Culture Wars: Recasting Religion and Politics in the 20th Century United States (forthcoming, University of Notre Dame Press), The Routledge History of the Twentieth-Century United States (Routledge Press, 2018), God’s Businessmen: Entrepreneurial Evangelicals in Depression and War (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Faith in the New Millennium: The Future of Religion and American Politics (Oxford University Press, 2016), American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History (University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), and Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Space, Place, and Region (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
Dochuk is continuing to explore connections between religion, politics, energy, and environment in North American as well as global contexts. His research has been supported by several agencies, including the American Council of Learned Societies, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Philosophical Society, Rockefeller Foundation, and Canadian government.
