Department of Religious Studies
News
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. The award was presented at the 58th Annual National Jewish Book Awards ceremony on March 5, 2009 at the Center for Jewish History in New York City. Dr. Shear was also awarded a 2007 Cahnman Publication Subvention Grant by the Association for Jewish Studies.
Milica Bakić-Hayden was elected to the position of president of the North American Society of Serbian Studies (NAASS). Since 2006, 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).
- Celebrating Purim, Jerusalem
Clark Chilson was awarded a 2008-2009 Lilly Endowment, Wabash Center Grant to conduct two workshops for university and college faculty on pedagogies for civic engagement in the study of religion [with Reid Locklin, Forrest Clingerman, and Erin Runions]. He was in Japan in 2007-2008 working on a manuscript titled "The Consequences of Concealment: A Comparative Study of Two Underground Traditions of Shin Buddhism" with the support of a Social Science Research Council, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship. His Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions (University of Hawai'i Press, 2006), coedited with Paul Swanson, was selected as a 2007 Outstanding Academic Title by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
Rebecca Denova spent an eventful summer in Egypt participating in the UCIS/Global Studies Program's 2007 Short-term Egypt Study Tour for Educators on Islam, the West, and the Muslim World, supported by a Fulbright-Hays grant. Also in 2007, she once again won a College of General Studies (CGS) Student Choice Award, which honors faculty members who have made an impact on the CGS community and the University.
Linda Penkower was awarded a 2007 Association for Asian Studies, Northeast Asia Council Travel to Japan Grant for her project, "Sino-Japanese Relations and the Construction of Tiantai/Tendai Buddhist Lineage Accounts."
New Publications
University Professor Emeritus Bernard Goldstein co-authored The Astronomical Tables of Giovanni Bianchini [with José Chabás], History of Science and Medicine Library 12, Brill, 2009.
Clark Chilson, "Eulogizing Kūya as More than a Nenbutsu Practitioner: A Study and Translation of the Kūyarui," Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 34.2 (2007), and Asian Folklore Studies, "Special Issue Honoring Professor Peter Knecht, editor of Asian Folklore Studies, 1980-2006," 66.1-2 (2007) [coedited with Scott Schnell].
Paula Kane, "Jews and Catholics Converge: 'Song of Bernadette,'" in Catholics in the Movies, edited by Colleen McDannell, Oxford University Press, 2007, and "The Supernatural and Slavery: Catholics, Power, and Oppression," in The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, and the Ambiguities of American Reform, edited by Steven Mintz and John Stauffer, University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.
Linda Penkower, "'Turning the Wheel' in the North American Classroom" (in English and Japanese), in Seikai no shūkyō kyōkasho (Textbooks on Religions from Around the World), Taishō University Press, 2008 (DVD).
Adam Shear, "Canonicity and the Authority of Works of 'Jewish Thought': Theoretical Perspectives and Some Examples from the Early Modern Reception of the Kuzari," in Iggud: Selected Essays in Jewish Studies, vol. 1, ed. Baruch Schwartz, Aharon Shemesh, and Avraham Melamed, English edition edited by Adam Shear, Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 2009; "The Italian and Berlin Haskalah Revisited," Simon Dubnow Institute Jahrbuch Yearbook 6 (2007), and "The Role of Judah Halevi’s Sefer ha-Kuzari in Ashkenaz: A Case Study in the Transmission of Cultural Knowledge," in Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth-Century Enlightened Jewish Discourse, edited by Irene Zwiep, Andrea Schatz, and Resianne Smidt van Gelder-Fontaine, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007.