Department of Religious Studies
News
Graduate Student News
Recent Appointments
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.
We wish Amy Slagle (PhD, 2008) continued success as she joins the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Southern Mississippi as an assistant professor of religious studies beginning fall 2008.
Degrees Awarded
Congratulations to Alexandra C.K. Seitz on earning the MA degree in summer 2009 with a thesis called "Arriving at the 'Proper' Moral Choice: Pittsburgh Catholics for Obama and Issues of Social Justice." Ali is continuing in the PhD program.
Graduate Student Publications
- Icon of saints Cyril and Methodius, Apostles to the Slavs
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).
Hongyu Wu published "Shannüren zhuan he Qingdai Jushi Fojiao" (The Biographies of Good Women and Lay Buddhism in the Qing Dynasty) in Bai nian fojiao (Chinese Buddhist Studies in the Last Century), Wuhan University Press, 2008.
Dissertation Fellowship Winner
Patrick Hughes was awarded a 2009 Library Resident Research Fellow at the American Philosophical Society Library in Philadelphia to conduct research on his project called "A Reception History of Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason."
Pitt Fellowship and Award Winners
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).
Joel Brady received the 2009 Nationality Rooms, Eugene Manasterski Memorial Award to support summer research in Lviv, Ukraine on his dissertation "Transnational Conversions: Greek Catholic Converts to Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe and America." Joel is the recipient of two REES FLAS Fellowships (2007-2008, 2008-2009) as well as a 2007-2008 Michael Komichak Ukrainian Language Scholarship.
Congratulations to Andrew Cole ("Baklava, Books, and Boundaries: Religious Identity and Education for Eastern Orthodox Children in America") and Alexandra C.K. Seitz ("Arriving at the 'Proper' Moral Choice: Pittsburgh Catholics for Obama and the Question of Abortion") whose presentations at the 2009 Arts and Sciences Grad Expo won Outstanding Paper awards.
Congratulations to Maggie Rencewicz on winning a 2008 REES FLAS Fellowship for the intensive study of Slovak at Pitt's Russian and European Summer Language Institute.
Izzet Bahar received the 2008 Nationality Rooms, Israel Heritage Room Award to support summer research in Israel on his dissertation "Jewish Immigration through Turkey to Palestine, 1939-1945: Rescue and Relief."
Congratulations to Hongyu Wu, who conducted research in China in 2007 on her dissertation "Leading the Good Life: Biographical Narratives of and Instructions for Chinese Lay Buddhist Women in the High Qing (1644-1839)," on receiving a second-year renewal of a Mellon Fellowship (2006-2007, 2007-2008).
Conference Presentations
Alexandra C.K. Seitz presented "Arriving at the 'Proper' Moral Choice: Pittsburgh Catholics for Obama and the Question of Abortion" at the Annual Convention of the American Studies Association, Washington, D.C., in November 2009.
Peter de Vries presented "The Challenge of Apocalyptic Texts in Contexts of Crisis" at the Society for Biblical Studies annual meeting in New Orleans in November.
Joel Brady presented three papers at national conferences in 2009: "Ethnography by Judicial Proxy in East European and American Migrant Religious History" at the Forty-first Annual Convention of the American Academy for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in November; "Transnational Reforms: Greek Catholic Converts to Russian Orthodoxy in America and Eastern Europe, 1890-1914" at the Third Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of Eastern Christian History and Culture in October, for which he organized the panel called "Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Reform in the History of Eastern Christianity"; and "Transnational Conversions: Migrants in America and Greek Catholic Conversion Movements to Eastern Orthodoxy in the Habsburg Empire, 1900-1914" at the University of Alberta Conference on Eastern Christians in the Habsburg Monarchy in September.
Emily Bailey presented "Eating Habits: An Ethnographic Study of Social Food Practice in Female Catholic Religious Life" at the Joint Annual Meeting of the AFHVS (Agriculture, Food and Human
Values Society) and ASFS (Asssociation for the Study of Food and Society) held at Penn State University in May 2009.
For the sixth year running, religious studies graduate students were well represented at the Arts and Sciences Grad Expo. This year, four students presented their research: Emily Bailey, "Shoshin-Beginner’s Mind: My Month in an American Zen Monastery"; Andrew Cole, "Baklava, Books, and Boundaries: Religious Identity and Education for Eastern Orthodox Children in America"; Alexandra C.K. Seitz, "Arriving at the Proper Moral Choice: Pittsburgh Catholics for Obama and the Question of Abortion"; and Peter de Vries, "The Apocalyptic Genre Considered by the Light of Ricoeur's Hermeneutics." The 2009 Grad Expo was held on March 16, 2009 in the William Pitt Union.
Hongyu Wu presented "Buddhist Practices and the Womanly Way: Biographical Narratives of Buddhist Laywomen in High Qing China" at the XVth Congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies on June 24, 2008.
Izzet Bahar presented "German or Jewish: The German Scholars in Turkey, 1933-1950" at a Graduate Student Conference held at Harvard University on "New Approaches: Home, Nation, and Landedness in Modern Jewish Identity," cosponsored by Columbia University's Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, May 11-12, 2008.