News
The Department of Religion's first study abroad program in Cairo, Egypt, led by Professor Valerie Hoffman, was a success! For a summary of the trip, please click here.
AWARDS
Congratulations to Ian Clausen and Michael Mrozinsky, who have both been awarded the Hoffman Family Award for Outstanding Achievement in Religious Studies for 2008.
Congratulations to Matt Tedeschi, Jeff Peyton, and Marianne Howe, who have all been awarded the Religious Studies Excellence in Undergraduate Studies Award for 2008.
We congratulate Professors Mohammad Khalil and Ken Howell, and graduate teaching assistants Sunglim Lee, Reshmi Mukherjee, Nathan Raybeck, Jeffrey Thibert, and Yushan You for being recognized for excellent teaching for the Fall 2007 semester. For the full list of instructors who who were ranked as excellent by their students in Fall 2007, click here.
Professor Rajeshwari Pandharipande has been selected as a Distinguished Teacher/Scholar at the University of Illinois on account of her record of teaching and scholarship, and her commitment to improving teaching across the campus. Professor Pandharipande's designation as Distinguished Teacher/Scholar will commence during the 2008-2009 academic year, and she will retain the title of Distinguished Teacher/Scholar for the rest of her academic career.
Justin Doran, a major in the Program for the Study of Religion, has received the Chancellor's Distinguished Fellowship from the University of California at Riverside. The fellowship will provide Justin with full tuition and a stipend for 3 years as he pursues a PhD in Religious Studies, specializing in "Method and Theory."
Ian Clausen, a major in the Program for the Study of Religion, is U of I's first Marshall Scholarship recipient in a decade. For more information, click here.
Professor Jonathan Ebel has received a Faculty Fellowship from the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities for 2007-2008. For more information, visit the IPRH Faculty Fellow page here.
In 2007, Professors Richard Layton and Walter Feinberg received support from the Spencer Foundation for their project "Current Initiatives to Teach Courses on Religion in Public Schools: Visions of American Citizenship Education." Access an overview of their project proposal, in Word format, here.
Professor Wayne Pitard has been selected as an NCSA/UIUC Faculty Fellow for the academic year 2007-2008. This fellowship will support further development of Professor Pitard's InscriptiFact Project. In 2007 he has also received, by way of recognition of the success of this project, an Alumni Discretionary Award from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In addition Professor Pitard has accepted an appointment as Director of the Spurlock Museum.
Professor Brian Ruppert has been selected as a visiting research scholar from July 2007 to June 2008 by The International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Kokusai Nihon Bunka Kenkyu Sentaa; Nichibunken) in Kyoto, Japan. He will work on a project concerning the relationship between Buddhism and communication in medieval and late medieval Japan.
NEW BOOKS
Jonathan Ebel, Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the First World War. Forthcoming from Princeton University Press.
Valerie Hoffman, The Essentials of Ibadi Islam. Forthcoming from Syracuse University Press.
Robert Alun Jones, The Secret of the Totem (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
--Book review prepared for the journal Religion (Word)
Wayne Pitard, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, Volume 2: Introduction with Text, Translation and Commentary on KTU 1.3-1.4. With Mark S. Smith. Forthcoming in 2009 from E. J. Brill, Leiden/New York.
David Price, translation from Latin into German of Nicodemus Frischlin, Phasma (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 2007), 421pp. (Frischlin's work is an early dramatization of the History of the Protestant Reformation.)
Bruce Rosenstock, Philosophy and the Jewish Question: Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and Beyond, forthcoming from Fordham University Press.
Brian Ruppert, Japanese Buddhism in History, co-authored with William Deal, forthcoming from Blackwell Publishing.
James Treat, ed., Writing the Cross Culture: Native Fiction on the White Man's Religion (Fulcrum, 2006).
James Treat, Around the Sacred Fire: Native Religious Activism in the Red Power Era. Forthcoming in paperback from University of Illinois Press, 2007. (Originally published in 2003 in cloth by Palgrave/Macmillan.)