Steven Hrotic

Steven Hrotic began teaching sociology at Norwich in 2017, and takes an interdisciplinary approach to human behavior. He earned his doctorate at the School of History and Anthropology at Queen's University Belfast, following a BA at the University of Vermont.

Hrotic's academic career began with studying anthropology and the history of religion at UVM. At Queen's, his focus was the cognitive science of religion: how evolution has shaped the human brain, and how the universality of religion gives us insight into human culture. To broaden his perspective, he then completed postdoctorate positions with biologists at the University of Utrecht and philosophers at the University of North Texas. He’s taught in a variety of disciplines (sociology, anthropology, and religion, but also history, art history, literature, and psychology). Not coincidentally, he is deeply curious about the history of disciplinary education and the theory and application of interdisciplinarity. Published work includes “Blue Skies, Impacts, and Peer Review” (2013, with J.B. Holbrook), “A Cognitive Analysis of the Palestrina Myth” (2013), “A Neo-Victorian Cognitive Science of Religion” (2017), and Religion in Science Fiction: The Evolution of an Idea and the Extinction of a Genre (2014).

As an instructor, Hrotic’s primary goal is to give students the tools they need to satisfy their curiosity, to promote a habit of life-long learning, and, in the words of Norwich’s Mission Statement, “to make moral, patriotic, efficient, and useful citizens, and to qualify them for all those high responsibilities resting upon a citizen of this free republic.”