The Department of Religion was awarded a grant by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities to support their series of forums on Religion and Violence during the spring 2011 semester. In connection with this grant, James T. Johnson and James W. Jones were interviewed by WFDU (89.1 FM) on March 4, 2011 for the April 6 evening forum on Religion and Violence: The American Scene, arranged by the New Jersey Council on the Humanities. The interview will air on the NJCH program, Humanities Connection on WFDU on March 27. Listen to their interview on the New Jersey Council for the Humanities Website.
Emma J. Wasserman was awarded a fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University for the academic year 2011-12. Prof. Wasserman was chosen from over 800 applicants and will join a select group of 50 fellows.
WELCOME JESSICA VANTINE BIRKENHOLTZ
Dr. Jessica V. Birkenholtz will join the Department of Religion in the fall of 2011 as a New Faculty Fellow sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies. Dr. Birkenholtz graduated from the Department of South Asian Lanagages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago in 2010. She is a specialist in religions of South Asia. The title of her dissertation is "The Svasthani Vrata Katha (SVK) Tradition: Translating Self, Place, and Identity in Hindu Nepal." Birkenholtz's CV.
WELCOME JOSEPH WILLIAMS
The Department of Religion is pleased to welcome Joseph Williams (Ph.D., Florida State University) as the newest member of its faculty. Williams’s expertise is in the history of American religion, and his current book, Spirit Cure: A History of Pentecostal Healing (under contract with Oxford University Press), focuses on the dramatic changes in pentecostal healing over the course of the twentieth century. “I’ve always been fascinated by the various ways in which religion has not only survived but thrived right alongside modernizing trends,” he explains.“ The persistence of pentecostal healing over the past one hundred years provides a perfect illustration of religion’s resilience.” In his book Williams connects the history of pentecostal healing to trends in American society more generally, exploring numerous adaptations to divine healing made by adherents as they responded to developments in mainstream medicine, psychology, and alternative healing traditions such as homeopathy and chiropractic medicine. A desire to illuminate religion’s complicated relationship with other cultural forces animates his teaching as well. Students who take Williams’s courses—in the spring of 2011 he is teaching “Healing in the United States” and “Religions of the Western World”—can expect to hear a lot about religion’s influence in individuals’ daily lives. “While it’s important to understand the role of corporate worship and formal rituals,” he says, “I’m also interested in the ways believers incorporate religious assumptions and practices into the more everyday aspects of their lives.” Along the same lines, Williams argues that religion “certainly isn’t the only factor driving social and cultural change past or present in the United States, but it has always been a major player as it interacted in complex ways with everything from politics and the economy, to changing notions of gender, to scientific and technological developments. In short, religion matters!” Williams's CV.
