Department of Religious Studies
News
New & Noteworthy
Department News
Changing of the Administrative Guard Beginning 2009-2010
Dr. Clark Chilson replaces Dr. Adam Shear as director of undergraduate studies beginning fall term 2009. We encourage all majors to make an appointment, stop by and introduce yourself, or drop by whenever you need assistance with your program.
Please also join the department in thanking Dr. Shear for his many years of extraordinary and innovative service as DUS.
The department is further delighted to welcome our new administrator and graduate secretary, Ms. Donna Walker, who joins us in mid-September. Donna comes to us with years of experience working at Pitt, most recently in the Advising Center. Please drop by the office, introduce yourself, and make Donna feel at home!
Donna replaces Judy Macey, who retired last March after a long career at Pitt and dedicated, "above and beyond" service to the department. We wish Judy all the best as she enters the next phase of her life. She will surely be missed.
Announcing New Religious Studies Course
RELGST 1557: Buddhist Lives
Instructor: Clark Chilson
Meets Requiremens: W
- Buddhist bodhisattva, China
Graduate Student Fellowship Established by Alumna
Barbara "Lilan" Laishley (PhD, 2004) has established the Fred W. Clothey Fund for the Study of South Asia and Ritual to support student conference participation and research-related travel. The fund honors Fred W. Clothey, who became a professor emeritus in May 2006. For information on how to contribute to the fund, see Friends or call Donna Walker at 412.624.5990. For information on applying to the fund, visit Fellowships and Financial Support.
Faculty News
Congratulations to Adam Shear whose The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167-1900 (Cambridge University Press, 2008), the first reception history in the English language of any work of medieval Jewish thought, won the esteemed 2008 National Jewish Book Award, Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award in Scholarship, and the Journal of the History of Ideas' annual Morris D. Forkosch Prize for the best first book in intellectual history published in 2008. Dr. Shear was promoted to associate professor with tenure beginning September 2009. He was invited by the Advisory Committee of the Center for Jewish Studies in New York to organize a new "Working Group on the Jewish Book" and will convene six sessions in 2009-2010. For part of summer 2009 he was in Berlin participating in a long-range collaborative editorial and translation project called “Kulturtransfer im neuen Stil: Der Renaissance-Prediger Yehuda Moscato (ca. 1530-1590)” [Cultural Transfer in a New Style: The Renaissance Preacher Yehuda Moscato (ca. 1530-1590)], funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Berlin), 2007-2011.
Clark Chilson was invited to Tokyo in March 2009 to conduct ethnographic research on the leader of Soka Gakkai, Ikeda Daisaku. The Soka Gakkai is the largest Japanese new religion with millions of members. (Its daily newspaper, Seikyō shinbun, has a circulation of five million.) During this trip he attended ceremonies at which Ikeda Daisaku spoke and conducted extensive interviews with top leaders of the Soka Gakkai, including an 80-minute interview with the President of Soka Gakkai, Harada Minoru. The extensive access to Soka Gakkai’s leaders is probably the best any Japanese-speaking scholar has been granted in the past thirty years.
Milica Bakić-Hayden begins her tenure as president of the North American Society of Serbian Studies (NAASS) in 2009. Since 2007, she has been serving as its vice-president. The NAASS works under the umbrella of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS).
Graduate Student News
Recent Appointment
Congratulations to Sandra Collins, who earned the PhD degree this summer with a dissertation on “'Weapons upon her body': The Heroic Feminine in the Hebrew Bible,” on her appointment as adjunct professor of Biblical Studies and academic dean at the Byzantine Catholic Seminary beginning fall 2009.
PhD Student Wins Chancellor's Chinese Fellowship
Congratulations to PhD student Margarita Delgado on being awarded a second-year renewal of the Chancellor's Graduate Fellowship in Chinese Studies (2008-2009, 2009-2010).
PhD Student Publishes Book Based on MA Thesis
Congratulations to Izzet Bahar on the publication of a book, based on his Pitt religious studies MA thesis, called Jewish Historiography on the Ottoman Empire and its Jewry from the Late Fifteenth Century to the Early Decades of the Twentieth Century (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2008).
Undergraduate News
Two Class of 2009 Majors Inducted into Phi Beta Kappa
Congratulations to Jason Saltzman, who enters Tulane's School of Law in the fall, and John Schmidt, who enters the University of Tennessee's School of Medicine this fall, on being elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest undergraduate honors organization in the United States. Jason and John were among 79 inductees this year.
Two Majors Awarded Honors College BPhil Degrees
Congratulations to Ryan E. Suskey, for "Returning to Exile?: The Retrieving and Rejecting of Jewishness in French Shoah Narrative" (August 2008), and Timothy R. Jackson, for ""Deep Ecology in Action: A Series of Case Studies on the Conservation Efforts of Monastics and Other Religious Leaders in Mongolia, India, and Thailand" (2009). Tim, who completed a study trip on environmental issues in Mongolia, India and Thailand (May-December 2008), is the first recipient of a Fred W. Clothey Grant for South Asian and Ritual Studies. He presented "The Ecological Activities of Various Religious Groups in India," parts of which were incorporated in his BPhil thesis, at the Conference on Indian Philosophy held in Kolkata, India in January 2009.
Religious Studies Minor Acknowledged for Her Promotion of Women's Rights
Shannon Black (class of 2009) received a 2008 Nationality Rooms Scholarship to go to Tanzania, where she helped local villagers gain better access to water supplies while she learned about issues affecting women and families in Africa. She has been very active in Pitt’s Campus Women’s Organization (CWO), serving as president for the past two years. She was also the 2008-2009 president of Pitt’s campus-based Student Volunteer Organization, a community service group, and a member of Pitt’s Rainbow Alliance, an organization dedicated to the interests of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered communities. Read more about Shannon's promotion of women's right at home and abroad in the Pitt Chronicle.
Religious Studies Senior Thesis Research Highlighted in Pitt Magazine
Halle Goldblatt's (class of August 2008) ethnographic research for her senior thesis on the religious pilgrimage to the grave of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the last spiritual leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, an ultra-orthodox Judaism that emphasizes worldwide outreach and a return to traditional practices, was featured in Pitt Magazine's "Commons Room: A Slice of Campus Life" column.