This past summer was an enriching and productive time for the graduate students in our department. The following is a sample of their activities:
Samah Choudhury (Islamic Studies) spent the summer in an intensive language immersion program with the American Institute for Indian Studies studying Urdu in Lucknow, India. Their language studies were primarily through the lens of Urdu poetry and the history of Partition in South Asia. Attached is a photo (click to enlarge) of Samah and her classmates in front of a Qalandari Sufi shrine in Kakori, just outside of Lucknow.
Patrick D’Silva (Islamic Studies) received a Summer Research Fellowship from UNC’s Graduate School for his project, “Translating Muslim Yoga: Translating Two Indian Manuscripts on the Science of the Breath.” Working from manuscripts, Patrick edited and translated two Persian texts on ‘ilm-i dam, “the science of the breath.” Analyzing these manuscripts – their text, reception, and classification by Indian Muslims and British colonial administrators – is central to his dissertation.
Alejandro Escalante (Religion in the Americas) presented his paper at the international Marcella Althaus-Reid Conference at the University of Winchester. Panelists from Latin America, Europe, and the United States presented papers covering a wide range of topics from politics and gender to economics and sexuality. Alejandro’s paper argued that Althaus-Reid’s materialist theology can be best leveraged when complemented with erotic and queer phenomenologies, especially in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands. Conference proceedings will be published in the journal Feminist Theology.
Micah Hughes (Islamic Studies) spent six weeks in Istanbul, Turkey on a Pre-Dissertation Travel Award from the Center for Global Initiatives to do preliminary dissertation research. Spending most of his time in various libraries, such as the Beyazıt Devlet Kütüphanesi, he collected research materials such as journals and periodicals to be used in crafting his prospectus and dissertation.
Haley Petersen (Religions of Asia) spent the summer in Kyoto, Japan, where she studied Japanese and visited many historical sites, including several of the oldest Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples in the country. In addition, she attended Gion Matsuri, one of the largest festivals in Japan, and a week in the Japanese Alps, where she lived in a very small town, which has been preserved just as it was 300 years ago.
Tine Rassalle (Ancient Mediterranean Religions) spent two months at the Oriental Institute in Chicago where she worked on the registration and digitization of material from Megiddo, Israel. Many of the objects in the OI’s collection, ranging from figurines to human bones, had been put in in the depot over 50 years ago and have since then never been looked at. During her time there, Tine analyzed the materials, put them in a digital database and made them available to the public through their website. She also digitized several Syriac manuscripts from the 13th century and helped with the planning of the rehousing of the permanent museum collection into new showcases.