Cole Carnesecca
Cole Carnesecca, a recipient of a Mellon summer stipend, is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology. Mr. Carnesecca did his undergraduate work at Yale University, studying History and East Asian Studies (China) and writing his senior thesis, under Jonathan Spence and Annping Chin, about the emergence and spread of indigenous Christianity in China during the Republican Era (1911-1949, roughly), specifically focusing on the "Little Flock" movement under Watchman Nee. After graduation, he spent two years studying and living in mainland China and a subsequent year in Taiwan at Tunghai University, Taichung.
Three years living in Chinese cultures and societies brought to life many of the historical concerns Mr. Carnesecca had—how faith communities form and adapt, how they respond to the social context in which they are embedded, how their historical past influences their structural present—all drove him toward more sociological understandings of how religion, culture, and social structural transformations all collide and how people and communities make sense of and respond to those changes.