Prof. Dr. Silke Steets

silke.steets@uni-erfurt.de

Fellow (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies)

Contact

C19 – research building "Weltbeziehungen" / C19.03.10

Office hours

nach Vereinbarung

Visiting address

Campus
Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies
C19 – research building "Weltbeziehungen"
Max-Weber-Allee 3
99089 Erfurt

Mailing address

Universität Erfurt
Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies
Postfach 90 02 21
99105 Erfurt

Prof. Dr. Silke Steets

Personal Information

Silke Steets is professor of sociology at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and a principal investigator at the CRC 1265 Re-Figuration of Spaces at TU Berlin. Her research interests include urban sociology, sociology of space and architecture, sociology of religion, qualitative research methods, and sociological theory. In her doctoral thesis, »Wir sind die Stadt!« (Campus 2008), Silke reconstructs the spatial practices of members of Leipzig’s cultural and creative industries. Her Habilitation thesis, »Der sinnhafte Aufbau der gebauten Welt« (Suhrkamp 2015), focuses on developing a knowledge-sociological approach to architecture that extends Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s »The Social Construction of Reality« (1966) to the built world.

Silke was a visiting scholar at Boston University (2012), a Heisenberg Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Culture at Leipzig University (2017-2019) and a visiting researcher at UT Dallas (2018/19), before she became a professor of sociological theory at FAU. 

Website: silke-steets.de/en

Research Project

Waco Reborn: The Formation of a Creative Evangelical Urbanity in Texas

In my KFG project, I focus on a form of urbanity that is currently emerging in the Texas hinterlands, more specifically in the city of Waco. One of the central features of this urbanity is the close connection between evangelical Christianity, the built environment, and capitalism, which has led to an astonishing “rebirth” of the city in recent years. 

Waco is located in the heart of Texas on Interstate Highway 35, about halfway between Dallas and Austin. In the imaginary geography of the United States, Waco has long been associated with the 1993 FBI siege and storming of a compound belonging to the Branch Davidian sect, in which more than eighty people died. In recent years, however, the city has undergone a symbolic and physical “rebirth”. This transformation was triggered by the television series Fixer Upper, a highly successful home renovation show set in Waco, which has sparked a tourism boom that is radically changing the spatial fabric and image of the city. Interestingly, an evangelical motif of renewal inspires both the TV series as well as the spatial and symbolic transition of the city. I suggests to explore the complexity of this transition as a refiguration of religion, economy, and space, through which a new form of urbanity emerges that I tentatively call “creative evangelical urbanity”.