Roger Friedland works on sex, politics, and God. He has taught and done research in both Rome and Jerusalem. His book, Making Love: An American Father’s Roman Holiday, comparing the erotic culture of Rome and southern California, will be published by Harper-Collins in 2012. He is also at work on a book The Sex of State, about the politicization of religion around the world and the preoccupation with sex.

Friedland has a blog: Making Love

Friedland is Visiting Professor of Social Research and Public Policy, New York University-Abu Dhabi, as well as Professor of Cultural Sociology with a joint appointment in the Departments of Religious Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Friedland and Paolo Gardinali, Associate Director of the Benton Survey Research Center, are publishing a series of scholarly articles on the hook-up culture. Together with Janet Afary and Paolo Gardinali, he is also working on the relation between religiosity, gender and sexuality in Egypt, Turkey and Iran.

Friedland is the co-author of To Rule Jerusalem, with Richard Hecht, about the fraught relation between religion and nationalism in the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians for this sacred city. He also co-authored The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship, with Harold Zellman. His articles have appeared in magazines and newspapers in Italy, Germany, France, Hungary, and the United States.

Friedland is married and has twin daughters who have entered college and who used to find it really creepy that their father was doing research on this topic.

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