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Faculty News

From June 3 to 24, Aun Hasan Ali was a Short-term Visitor at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. The visitorship was part of the School of Historical Studies'聽. During his stay, Dr. Ali studied Istiqsa al-i鈥檛ibar fi sharh al-istibsar with Dr. Hassan Ansari, one of the foremost authorities on Shiism in North America. This work, which is a commentary on one of the four major collections of Shii hadith, was written by the 17th century scholar Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Shahid al-Thani. In it, the author discusses a wide range of issues including epistemology, hermeneutics, history, rationalism, and law. A detailed analysis of the issues discussed in this work will be presented in a forthcoming book, co-authored by Dr. Ansari and Dr. Ali, on the use of hadith in Shii law.

Natalie Avalos has several forthcoming publications this fall. A journal article titled 鈥淲e鈥檙e Not all Immigrants:鈥 The White Liberal Nostalgia of Immigrant Life,鈥 for the聽Sociological Imagination Journal, a joint chapter titled 鈥淩ed Praxis: Lessons from Mashantucket to Standing Rock,鈥 for the edited volume聽#NoDAPL and Mni Wiconi: Reflections on Standing Rock, and a short article on pedagogy titled 鈥淒ecolonial Approaches to the Study of Religion: Teaching Native American and Indigenous Religious Traditions鈥 in the American Academy of Religion鈥檚聽聽Religious Studies News聽Spotlight on Teaching series, focused on Teaching Religions as Anti Racism Education. She submitted an essay titled 鈥淟atinx Indigeneities and Christianity鈥 for the聽Oxford Handbook of Latinx Christianities in the United States聽over the summer and will be working on her manuscript titled聽The Metaphysics of Decoloniality: Transnational Indigenous Religious Regeneration and Resistance聽during the 2018-19 year.

Loriliai Biernacki is giving a keynote address for a conference on Religion and Science at the University of Saskatoon, Canada. The title of her talk is Feeling the Self: the Ghost in the Machine, addressing聽underlying conceptions of selfhood in the face of our unprecedented technological shifts.

In the Spring of 2018, Sam Boyd had two articles accepted for publication. The first, 鈥淓xodus 21:35 and the Composition and Date of the Covenant Code,鈥 utilizes two new methodological approaches in biblical studies (contact linguistics and memory studies) to analyze critical features of the law code in Exodus (traditionally believed to be the earliest legal collection in the Bible). The second, 鈥淪argon鈥檚 Dur-Sharrukin Cylinder Inscription and Language Ideology: A Reconsideration and Connection to Gen 11:1-9,鈥 contains two sections: a reanalysis of an influential passage from an Akkadian inscription and the importance for this reanalysis for understanding the Tower of Babel, which, I argue, is not a story about languages. The first article will appear in Die Welt des Orients. The second article will appear in the Journal for Near Eastern Studies. Additionally, Sam co-organized a conference held at Denver University, 精品SM在线影片, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science pertaining to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the museum. The conference drew over 300 people in attendance at all of the sessions combined.

This summer Brian Catlos was a scholar in residence at the Institut Mila i Fontanals in Barcelona (CSIC - Spain鈥檚 National Research Council). He was featured at the Bradford Literary Festival in July in a panel on聽鈥淚slam in Spain, the Rise and Fall of聽al-Andalus鈥; in September he will be interviewed at the Jaipur Literary Festival Boulder. His recent book, Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain (Basic Books: 2018) received a starred review in Library Journal, and was featured in the July 16 issue of The New Yorker (a review in the New York Review of Books this fall) In the coming year it will be translated into German, Spanish, Simplified Chinese and Complex Chinese. This fall he will be a speaker for Smithsonian in Spain and Portugal, will present at two conferences (Iberia, The Mediterranean, and the World in the Late Middle聽Ages and the Early Modern Period at the Center聽for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA; and聽La Reconquista. Ideolog铆a y justificaci贸n de la聽guerra santa peninsular聽in Palmela, Portugal), and is co-organizing his 28th Mediterranean Seminar Workshop, to be held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in October. In November he will speaking at the University of Toronto. His next book, Paradoxes of Plurality: Ethno-religious Diversity in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean (working title) is expected in late 2019. In Summer he completed an entry for the Encyclopedia of Islam 3, the Routledge Companion to Medieval Iberia, both on 鈥淢ud茅jares.鈥 Forthcoming book chapters include: 鈥淭he Abenferres: 鈥淟ittle Caesars鈥 of聽Fourteenth-Century Mud茅jar Lleida,鈥 鈥淏eyond Nostalgia: Berber 鈥淧uritans鈥 and the End聽of Andalusi Convivencia?鈥 and 鈥淭homas F. Glick and聽Convivencia鈥 A Few Words.鈥

Holly Gayley used her sabbatical last year to finalize translations for a new book, Inseparable Across Lifetimes: The Lives and Letters of the Tibetan Visionaries Namtrul Rinpoche and Khandro Tre Lhamo (Snow Lion Press, forthcoming). Her article "Revisiting the Secret Consort (gsang yum) in Tibetan Buddhism" came out in the journal Religions 9 (6) in June, and her chapter, "Gendered Hagiography in Tibet: Comparing Clerical Representations of the Female Visionary, Khandro T腻re Lhamo" is scheduled for release this fall in the anthology, Buddhist Feminisms and Femininities, edited by Karma Lekshe Tsomo (SUNY Press). Over the winter in Nepal and Bhutan, she began two new projects: (1) translating and analyzing songs of meditation advice by the Dudjom Lingpa (1835-1904) to Buddhist nuns and yogin墨s and (2) a collaborative project on contemporary Bhutanse women writers with Sonam Nyenda, alumnus of our MA program in Religious Studies. This fall she is organizing a Lotsawa Translation Workshop at 精品SM在线影片 with Dominique Townsend of Bard College. Scheduled for October 5-8, 2018, the workshop will gather 50 scholars, translators, and graduate students to discuss translation theory and practice and workshop translations-in-progress around the topic of Buddhist devotion.

Sam Gill will be retiring after the Fall 2018 Semester. Dr. Gill has been a member of the Religious Studies faculty for more than 35 years. Although retiring from teaching, his contributions to the field will continue as he has two books appearing this fall entitled聽Religion and Technology into the Future: From Adam to Tomorrow's Eve听补苍诲听Creative Encounters, Appreciating Difference: Perspectives and Strategies.

Greg Johnson continues as the Interim Director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies. 聽In this capacity, he was delighted to present aspects of his current work at the Native American and Indigenous Association meeting in May. 聽Over the summer he was in Hawai`i running two workshops, one with Carla Fredericks of the Law school and the other with an international team focused on indigenous religions聽based in Norway. 聽While in Hawai`i, Johnson also continued his research on sacred land and burial protection issues on Hawai`i island and Maui. 聽Summer writing projects focused on these issues and on bringing several other works to conclusion, including a forthcoming edited volume with Hugh Urban, Irreverence and the Sacred: Critical Studies in the History of religions. 聽Summer activities also included ongoing involvement with the Yale University material culture research group and Northwestern University's politics of religious freedom project. 聽In the fall Johnson will teach Native American religious traditions and will travel to Switzerland to give several lectures.

Terry Kleeman聽traveled聽around France for he first part of the summer, visiting various museums, sacred sites, and roman ruins. On June 8 he formally received his medal at the聽Institut du France, the M茅daille Stanislas Julien. He聽also participated in a reading session on early Daoist texts at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. In August Dr. Kleeman聽will go to Beijing for the Beijing University Humanistic Forum, after which he聽will visit Laozi鈥檚 birthplace and other legendary and historic sites in central China. In October Dr. Kleeman聽will go to Temple University to evaluate their program in Religious Studies.

Elias Sacks recently published an article on poetry, music, and religious tolerance in a volume on gender, Judaism, and aesthetics in the Enlightenment entitled聽Sara Levy鈥檚 World: Bach, Gender, and Judaism in Enlightenment Berlin聽(Eastman Studies in Music, Rochester University Press).听Sacks also spoke at a conference in Portland and at Princeton University and Jagiellonian University in聽Krakow, Poland, and completed his term as the President of the Rocky Mountain 鈥 Great Plains region of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical literature.听His forthcoming publications include an essay on the future of Jewish philosophy and translations of Jewish responses to the seventeenth-century heretic Baruch Spinoza.

David Shneer, chair of the department, will be teaching a new first year seminar called Fighting Fascism, Past and Present and presenting Art is My Weapon: The Radical Musical Life of Lin Jaldati at York University in Great Britain in September and the College of Charleston in November. 聽His upcoming book, Grief: The Biography of a Holocaust Photograph and聽under contract with Oxford University Press, examines the life history of one of the earliest Holocaust liberation photographs taken in southern Russia in January 1942. 聽For more information, see .听