Category Archives: News & Events
Congrats to Jerry Grimes, Religious Studies PhD Student
UNC Religious Studies Tenure-Track Job Posting
The Department of Religious Studies is recruiting for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Hinduism and South Asian Religions. Candidates should demonstrate clear evidence of their commitment to research and teaching, as well as their interest in mentoring students and participating in departmental life and service. The successful candidate will be expected to teach various undergraduate and graduate courses (including introductory and upper-level courses in Hinduism and/or religions of South Asia) and contribute to the Religions of Asia concentration. Candidates should complement the existing expertise of our current faculty, and their work should align with our departmental mission as outlined on our website (https://religion.unc.edu/about/mission-and-values/).
The successful candidate is required to have a Ph.D. in religious studies or a related field by July 1, 2025. Related disciplines include but are not limited to Asian studies, anthropology, and history.
Candidates should have broad training in their field of expertise, relevant linguistic competencies, a commitment to interdisciplinary work, and a strong interest in engaging with broad theoretical issues in the study of religion, including critical scholarship on religion in South Asia. Preference will be given to scholars whose work centers on popular, vernacular, or subaltern traditions and/or engages the contemporary or historical practices of socially or ritually marginalized communities or movements.
Your application should include: a curriculum vitae/resume, cover letter, writing/research sample, and teaching statement. Three signed reference letters must be uploaded into the UNC system OR via Interfolio (tcave@unc.edu). A fourth signed letter will be requested of shortlisted candidates. Teaching Evaluations and a list of references are both optional.
For more information click here: https://unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/289006
Posted in News & Events on October 9, 2024. Bookmark the permalink.Co-Authored Book by UNC Religious Studies Alumni
Join us in congratulating two of our alums, Megan Goodwin and Ilyse Morgenstein-Fuerst. They have a co-authored book, Religion Is Not Done With You, coming out with Beacon Press on November 5. They have set up the book launch at Fly Leaf (752 MLK Jr. Blvd.) in Chapel Hill on November 7, 5:30pm – 7:00pm–in part as an homage to their origin story as collaborators during their time at UNC. Flyleaf will offer seating for up to 70 in-person guests, with priority access given to folks who purchase the book.
Megan Goodwin, PhD, is co-director and co-founder of the Bardo Institute for Religion and Public Policy, and media and technology consultant for the Crossroads Project. She is the author of Abusing Religion: Literary Persecution, Sex Scandals, and American Minority Religions. Her research focuses on American religions, race, sexuality, and politics. Goodwin co-hosts Keeping It 101: A Killjoy’s Introduction to Religion Podcast with Dr. Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst. Her next project is tentatively entitled Cults Incorporated: The Business of Bad Religion.
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, PhD, is associate professor of religion and director of the Humanities Center at the University of Vermont. She was a 2022-2023 Fulbright Scholar at the University of Birmingham. Her research centers on Islam and Muslims in South Asia; imperialism; and intersections of religion, race, and belonging. She is author of Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion: Religion, Rebels, and Jihad and co-editor of Words of Experience: Translating Islam with Carl W. Ernst.
Check out the book here: https://flyleafbooks.com/event/2024-11-07/megan-goodwin-ilyse-morgenstein-fuerst-present-religion-not-done-you.
Posted in News & Events on October 9, 2024. Bookmark the permalink.
Jerusalem Through the Ages: A Conversation
Join us on Sunday, November 17th, 2024 for a panel discussion focusing on the new book, Jerusalem Through the Ages by Jodi Magness, Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism. Click HERE to register for the event. This discussion will be moderated by Bart Ehrman, James A. Gray Distinguished Professorin Early Christian History. This is a fundraiser for the Robert Miller Graduate Student Excellence Fund with a suggested donation of $20. Hope to see you there!
Posted in News & Events on September 7, 2024. Bookmark the permalink.Recent Religious Studies graduate receives prestigious Claremont Prize!
On behalf of the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (Columbia University) the UNC Religious Studies program is excited to announce our very own Isaiah Ellis as the winner of the 2024 Claremont Prize for the Study of Religion for his work, Apostles of Asphalt: Race, Empire, and the Religious Politics of Infrastructure in the American South. The book will be published by Columbia University Press in IRCPL’s Religion, Culture, and Public Life series. Please be on the lookout for that upcoming book release!
Apostles of Asphalt: Race, Empire, and the Religious Politics of Infrastructure in the American South
– Isaiah Ellis
We usually imagine infrastructure as offering solutions to problems of mobility and political unification, but grand statements about the positive socio-economic change accompanying infrastructure development grate against renewed criticism of its role in empire-building, structural inequality, and segregation by design. Apostles of Asphalt explores infrastructure’s fraught but central role in the drama of American history by investigating the ideas at the root of the modern highway system. In the decades leading up to the first Federal highway bills of the 1920s, participants in a reform-minded movement for good roads laid the groundwork for a modernized, federally funded highway system. This “Good Roads Movement” was most impactful in the American South, where its advocates drew upon the language of moral reform and longer legacies of U.S. empire building to argue that white southerners had a moral burden to civilize American land by building public infrastructure. Southern road builders were uniquely successful in arguing for public infrastructure because they articulated their efforts as missionary, redemptive, and civilizing, not only on behalf of the nation but also to redeem and reinvigorate their Confederate past. Those rhetorical moves impacted the lives and work of government officials, engineers, and corporate agents, as well as the Black convict laborers and Indigenous pathfinders whose labor made modern roads possible. What the terms “missionary, redemptive, and civilizing” meant was not always straightforward or coherent, but it was their useful ambiguity, as well as their specific cultural resonance in the Jim Crow South, that proved to be roadbuilders’ most effective tool in advancing a national roadbuilding agenda. At its core, Apostles of Asphalt is about infrastructure’s contested rise as an emblem of the public good in the United States, and how American Christianity’s historical entanglement with race and empire continues to haunt American political and public life.
Isaiah Ellis is an incoming Assistant Professor of Urban Religions in the Department of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas. He has recently served as an Arts & Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, and in the coming year he will be a Robert M. Kingdon Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He received his Ph.D. in Religion and Culture from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Posted in News & Events on July 11, 2024. Bookmark the permalink.Book Launch, Panel Discussion for Professor Jodi Magness
We invite you to join us in the W. F. Albright Institute courtyard or on Zoom for a panel discussion of Professor Jodi Magness‘s latest book, Jerusalem Through the Ages: From Its Beginnings to the Crusades (OUP), jointly hosted by Tel Aviv University, The Koret Center, and the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research. The discussion will be chaired by Prof. Vered Noam (TAU), will feature a panel including Prof. Yuval Gadot (TAU), Dr. Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah, and Dr. Gideon Avni (IAA). The discussion will conclude with a response by Prof. Jodi Magness, followed by a reception.
Jerusalem Through the Ages: For followers of the three Abrahamic faiths, Jerusalem is the place where the presence of the God of Israel dwells. Jerusalem Through the Ages explores how this belief came to be associated with the city by introducing readers to its complex and layered history, including the most recent archaeological discoveries. Each chapter focuses on a key moment of transition from Jerusalem’s beginnings to the Middle Ages, providing a vivid narrative of the city’s many transformations as it changed hands and populations. The book also includes a walking guide for visitors who wish to experience the city’s many archaeological marvels firsthand.
Jodi Magness is Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work on Jerusalem Through the Ages was supported by a Fulbright Fellowship at Tel Aviv University and a Seymour Gitin Fellowship at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem.
Posted in News & Events on May 19, 2024. Bookmark the permalink.Feeling Cross-species Kinship in Edo-Period Morality Books: Excessive Affect and the Ethic of Refraining from Killing and Releasing Life
On Monday, May 20, Religious Studies Professor Barbara Ambrose will give a talk entitled “Feeling Cross-species Kinship in Edo-Period Morality Books: Excessive Affect and the Ethic of Refraining from Killing and Releasing Life” from 5:30~7:00 pm in the Nanto Room of Reiners Library at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan.
The talk is free and open to the public. Below is a brief introduction to the topic:
Influenced by Ming and Qing morality books, particularly the works of the Buddhist cleric Yunqi Zhuhong (1535–1615), devotional ritual releases of captive animals on the verge of death surged in popularity in the Edo period. Zhuhong’s seminal Jiesha fangsheng wen (Tract on refraining from killing and releasing life) was published in Japan as a Sino-Japanese edition in 1661 and inspired the composition of about three dozen Japanese Buddhist texts over the next two-and-a-half centuries. Most Japanese tracts on refraining from killing and releasing life were authored by Buddhist clerics, but some texts were composed by wealthy merchants, village heads, and lay intellectuals.
Posted in News & Events on May 19, 2024. Bookmark the permalink.Blueprints for Innovation
Religious Studies professor Lauren Leve has recently been featured in an article entitled “Blueprints for Innovation,” written by Emmy Trivette. Professor Leve, along with Jim Mahaney, are partnering with Nepalese locals to bring religious heritage sites to life through interviews and digital tools.
In 2015, a 7.8 earthquake shook Nepal, and the city of Kathmandu rippled. Buildings swayed, temples toppled — and Lauren Leve was just 90 miles from the epicenter. The disaster destroyed more than 600,000 buildings and killed thousands. The earthquake’s tremble could be felt over 300 miles away in western Bhutan. To survive and witness this event was to survive and witness tragedy.
“Many buildings were damaged irrevocably, and you couldn’t live in them anymore,” Leve shares. “And the temples were destroyed. It was devastating.”
A religious studies professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, Leve has spent 30 years traveling back and forth to Nepal for her research. The 2015 earthquake highlighted the importance of preserving cultural heritage — and motivated Leve to pursue a project to do exactly that.
Now, she is collaborating with Carolina computer scientist Jim Mahaney and Kathmandu locals to document the Swayambjunath, or “Swayambhu,” temple — a monument with deep cultural significance for the region. Today, the team has conducted more than 30 interviews with temple priests, Buddhist monks, devoted visitors, and other people with traditional connections to the site…
Reli Club & Mesoamerican Religious Practices
The RELI Club (RELIC) had a great event on the 22nd, hosting a roundtable with Dr. Eduardo de J. Douglas from Art History, student Brenda Palacios Rodriguez (Akatek Maya), and our own Dr. Abelardo de la Cruz (Nahua) about Mesoamerican knowledge, cosmology, language, and religion. The event was moderated by Isaac Watkins, the President of the RELI Club. The conversation ranged from the creation of the idea of “Mesoamerica” to Mayan and Nahua ideas about the stars to the way religion exists within – and not apart – from language, food, and homemaking. A wide range of students asked great questions and enjoyed good pizza as they learned from all three. This was a stellar end to the semester for the club and a promising sign of great events to come from this group of first year majors!
Posted in News & Events on April 26, 2024. Bookmark the permalink.