Core Faculty

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Core Faculty

Name/Title Contact Info Areas of Focus
Research Interests
Ambros

Barbara Rossetti Ambros
Professor

125C Carolina Hall
bambros@email.unc.edu

  • Religions of Asia
  • (Medieval and Early Modern Studies)
Religions in Japan; pilgrimage & sacred space; gender & religion; human-animal relationships; religion & the environment
Ariel

Yaakov Ariel
Professor

106 Carolina Hall
yariel@email.unc.edu

  • Religion in the Americas
  • (Jewish Studies, Christianity and Culture)
Christian-Jewish relations; missions & conversions; Judaism & Christianity in the modern world; Christian & Jewish new religious movements; Christianity & the Holy Land; Pietism & Evangelicalism
Bayne

Brandon Bayne
Associate Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies

129 Carolina Hall
bayne@unc.edu

  • Religion in the Americas
  • (Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Christianity and Culture)
Colonial missions; early modern Catholicism; Native American Christianities; Latina/o & borderlands religion; martyrdom & relics

Jessica A. Boon
Associate Professor

113 Carolina Hall
jboon@email.unc.edu

  • Medieval and Early Modern Studies
  • (Religion and Culture, Christianity and Culture)
Mysticism; Marian and Passion-centered devotions; history of medicine; gender/sexuality/trans studies; disability studies; history of emotion

Youssef Carter
Assistant Professor, Kenan Rifai Fellow in Islamic Studies

122 Carolina Hall
youssefcarter@unc.edu

  • Islamic Studies
Sufism & Sufi movements; Islam in West Africa & United States; Religion in the African Diaspora; Black Atlantic & Decolonial Studies; Anthropology of Religion

Eden Consenstein
Assistant Professor, Mary Noel and William M. Lamont Fellow in Religion, Media and Technology

125-B Carolina Hall
edenc@ad.unc.edu

  • Religion and Culture
  • Religion, Media, and Technology
  • Religion in the Americas
Religion, Media, and Technology; History of Capitalism; Consumerism & Material Culture; New Religious Movements; Secularism Studies;

Andrea Dara Cooper
Associate Professor, Leonard and Tobee Kaplan Scholar in Modern Jewish Thought and Culture

127 Carolina Hall
adcooper@email.unc.edu

  • Religion and Culture
  • (Jewish Studies)
Modern Jewish thought; gender studies; cultural theory; continental philosophy; critical animal studies

Abelardo de la Cruz
Assistant Professor, Nahua Scholar

125F Carolina Hall
dlacruz@unc.edu

  • Religion in the Americas
  • Mesoamerican religions (Huasteca Veracruzana, Mexico)

  • Mexican Indigenous Religions

Nahuatl language; Discourse analysis; Indigenous devotions; The sacred landscape; Ritual practices; Ethnography in Indigenous communities; Christian prayers translated into Nahuatl

Ehrman

Bart D. Ehrman
James A. Gray Distinguished Professor

117 Carolina Hall
behrman@email.unc.edu

  • Ancient Mediterranean Religions
  • (Christianity and Culture)
New Testament interpretation; Apostolic Fathers; early Christian apocrypha; orthodoxy & heresy in early Christianity
Hammer

Juliane Hammer
Professor

126 Carolina Hall
jhammer@email.unc.edu

  • Islamic Studies
  • (Religion in the Americas)
Gender & sexuality in Islam; US Muslim communities; intersectionality, feminism, & Islam; theory & method in Islamic studies, Sufism, Islam & food; contemporary Qur’anic hermeneutics & religious practice
Lam

Joseph Lam
Associate Professor

336 Dey Hall
jclam@email.unc.edu

  • Ancient Mediterranean Religions
  • (Jewish Studies)
Hebrew Bible in its ANE context; Hebrew & other Semitic languages; ritual in the ANE; writing in the ANE; metaphor in religious language

David Lambert
Associate Professor

120 Carolina Hall
dalambe@email.unc.edu

  • Ancient Mediterranean Religions
  • (Jewish Studies)
Hebrew Bible in its ANE environment; hermeneutics & the history of biblical interpretation; late Second Temple Judaism; history of Jewish thought; history of the self; translation studies
Leve

Lauren G. Leve
Associate Professor

121 Carolina Hall
leve@email.unc.edu

  • Religions of Asia
  • (Religion and Culture)
Ethnographic methods; Buddhism in South & SE Asia; gender & feminist theory; globalism, nationalism & postcoloniality; religions of South Asia & Nepal
Magness

Jodi Magness
Kenan Distinguished Professor

223 Murphey Hall
magness@email.unc.edu

  • Ancient Mediterranean Religions
  • (Islamic Studies)
Early Judaism; archaeology of Palestine
Marienberg

Evyatar Marienberg
Professor

112 Carolina Hall
evyatarm@unc.edu

  • Medieval and Early Modern Studies
  • (Jewish Studies, Ancient Mediterranean Religions, Christianity and Culture)
Rabbinic Judaism & Jewish law; rituals; contemporary Catholicism; regulation of sexuality; social history in the Middle Ages ; Religion in Europe
Mendez

Hugo Méndez
Assistant Professor

125G Carolina Hall
hmendez@email.unc.edu

  • Ancient Mediterranean Religions
New Testament; Reception and Cultural History of New Testament texts; Early and Late Antique Christianity; Greek

Todd Ramón Ochoa
Associate Professor

118 Carolina Hall
tochoa@email.unc.edu

  • Religion in the Americas
  • (Religion and Culture, Christianity and Culture)
African-inspired religions in Latin America and the Caribbean; Cuban-Kongo societies of affliction; materiality; critical ethnographic practice
plese

Zlatko Pleše
Professor

116 Carolina Hall
plese@email.unc.edu

  • Ancient Mediterranean Religions
  • (Christianity and Culture, Jewish Studies)
Gnosticism and Manichaeism; Hellenistic religions, philosophy & rhetoric; Plutarch & Platonism; Coptic language and literature
Styers

Randall G. Styers
Associate Professor, Department Chair

128 Carolina Hall
rstyers@unc.edu

  • Religion and Culture
  • (Religion in the Americas, Christianity and Culture)
Modern Western religious thought; contemporary critical thought; religion and magic; religion and law; gender theory
thornton

Brendan Jamal Thornton
Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies

125F Carolina Hall
Brendan_Thornton@unc.edu

  • Religion in the Americas
  • (Religion and Culture, Christianity and Culture)
Caribbean and Latin America; Anthropology of Christianity; Afro-Creole Religions; Gender and Masculinity

Waleed Ziad
Associate Professor

130 Carolina Hall
wziad@email.unc.edu

  • Islamic Studies
Iranian/Persianate world; Sufism from the early modern to contemporary periods; Iranian Numismatics

 

Emeritus Faculty

Carl W. Ernst
 David J. Halperin
 Peter I. Kaufman
 Laurie Maffly-Kipp
 William J. Peck
 Jack M. Sasson
 John Van Seters