News & Events 

In the current issue of Bostonia:

Professor Stephen Prothero talks about providing a synopsis of each of the eight major world religions in Twitter-speak. To read the article “Tweeting on High” click here.

Professor Michael Grodin blends eastern healing and western medicine to aid torture victims in Tibet. To read the article “Treating Tibet’s Traumatized” click here.
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In the current issue of Research Magazine 2009, Katherine French, a double major in classics-religion and archaeology, is researching the Gospel of John. Ms. French is being mentored by Professor Jennifer Knust through BU’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). “My research was a strange combination of paleography, traditional historiography, art history, and even archaeology,” says French.
To read more about Katherine’s research click here.

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Boston University Department of Religion is pleased to announce a new faculty
member coming January 1st

Emily T. Hudson, who will be joining the Religion Department in the spring 2010,
received her M.A. from the University of Chicago and her Ph.D. from the Graduate
Division of Religion at Emory University with a specialization in South Asian religion(s),
comparative literature, and literary theory. For the past two years, she has been teaching
at Harvard University as a lecturer in the history and literature program. Situating herself
methodologically at the crossroads of religion and literature, the history of religions,
and religious ethics, Hudson’s teaching and research interests focus on South Asian
literature and literary theory, Greek epic and tragedy, and comparative religious ethics.
Her current research project, Disorienting Dharma: Ethics and the Poetics of Suffering
in the Mahabharata, explores the relationship between aesthetics, ethics, and religion
in one of the most celebrated and enigmatic literary texts to emerge from the Sanskrit
epic tradition.

Courses for Spring 2010:
Sacred Journeys
CAS RN102
MWF 1:00PM-2:00PM

Topics in Religion and Literature
"Epic and Empire"
CAS RN524 A1/XL560 A1/STH TX826A1
M 6:00PM-9:00PM

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Professor Paula Fredriksen talks about her new book, “Augustine and the Jews:
A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism” in the current issue of Bostonia.
“Augustine and I met my junior year of college,” says Paula Fredriksen, “and we’ve
been an item ever since.”  To read the article in Bostonia click here.

Professor Fredriksen will be teaching a seminar in the Fall, “Augustine, Conversions,
and Confessions”. For more information click here.

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Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (Ral).
Photo used with the permission of The Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship.

Professor Frank Korom has received a nine-month grant from the American Institute
for Sri Lankan Studies (http://www.aisls.org/index.html) to carry out fieldwork on the 
island for his latest project "Guru Bawa and Transnational Sufism." The project looks 
at a charismatic Tamil Sufi saint known as Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
(Ral), who emerged from obscure origins to create a community of Sufis first in Sri
Lanka, then in Philadelphia, where the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship (http://www.bmf.org/)
was founded in the 1970s. His burial site in rural Pennsylvania has now become a
pilgrimage site, and the Fellowship continues to flourish in many locations in North
America and Europe. Much less, however, is known about the Sri Lankan side of the
story, which is what Korom intends to investigate by studying with the Serendib Sufi
Study Circle in Colombo, the parent organization that preceded the establishment of
the Fellowship. The overall goal of the project is to reconstruct the genesis, development,
and growth of the movement to understand how Bawa fits into the context of alternative
spiritualities that emerged in the US during the decade of the seventies.
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Boston University Department of Religion is pleased to announce our new faculty
member coming September 1st

Teena Purohit will be joining the Religion Department in Fall 2009. She received her Ph.D
in Religion at Columbia University in 2007. She has taught classes on major texts of the
Middle East and South Asia at Columbia University and South Asian Religions at UC Irvine.
Professor Purohit's research and teaching interests focus on the history of Islam in South
Asia, religion and colonialism, and South Asian history and historiography. She is currently
working on her book manuscript, The Modernity of Muslim Identity: Ismaili Sectarianism
in Colonial India.

Courses for Fall 2009:
Islamic Mysticism: Sufism
CAS RN341/GRS RN641/STH TX844
TR 11:00AM-12:30PM

Religion and Politics in South Asia
CAS RN425/GRS RN725/STH TX825
TR 2:00PM-3:30PM

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Professor Michael Zank receives Journal for the Study of Religion and ideology
Prize to honor his contributions to the journal and to the field of Jewish Studies.

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Professor Paula Fredriksen's new book, "Augustine and the Jews" was released
by Doubleday on December 2, 2008. To read a review in Time Magazine click here.

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Department of Religion 2009 Annual Lecture , Wednesday, March 18, 2009, 5:00pm
“Radical Enlightenment and Indian Religion: The Curious Case of Bernard and Picart”
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Professor and Doshi Chair of Indian History, UCLA

Professor Subrahmanyam has written extensively on religion, trade, and politics in
early modern India (15th-18th centuries). His multifaceted and interdisciplinary
approach to the study of religion in economic and political transactions across the
Indian Ocean holds broad implications for our understanding of the way religion
impacts other aspects of culture. He has served as Directeur d'études at the École
des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, as Chair in Indian History and Culture
at the University of Oxford, and currently holds the Navin and Pratina Doshi Chair of
Indian History at UCLA.

Click here to view a PDF flier of the event

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Peter Manseau wins National Jewish Book Award for novel, Songs for the Butcher's
Daughter. Peter was a student in the DRTS and department administrator (2000-2001)
before leaving to devote himself to writing full time. His previous book, Vows, is a
memoir of growing up as the son of a priest and a nun. For a link to Peter's thoughts
on winning the award, see his post at jewcy.com.

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Professor Steven Katz to deliver Sackler Lectures at the Mortimer and Raymond
Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Click here to view a PDF flier of the event.

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PROFESSOR STEPHEN R. PROTHERO TO DELIVER
WILLIAM BELDEN NOBLE LECTURES NOV. 18-20 AT
THE MEMORIAL CHURCH, HARVARD YARD, ON
“THE WORK OF DOING NOTHING: WANDERING AS PRACTICE AND PLAY”

Boston University Professor and New York Times best-selling author, Stephen R. Prothero, will travel to Harvard to deliver the prestigious William Belden Noble Lectures at The Memorial Church in Harvard Yard, on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, November 18-20, at 8:00 p.m.  The lecture series title is “The Work of Doing Nothing: Wandering as Practice and Play,” and the titles of the individual lectures will be, on Nov. 18, “Wandering Out: Leaving and Letting Go,” on Nov. 19, “Wandering Around: Out of Doors and Out of Mind,” and on Nov. 20, “Wandering Home: Reckoning and Return.”  Professor Prothero is Chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University and author of Religious Literacy: What Americans Need to Know and American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. 

In his Noble Lectures, Professor Prothero will explore wandering as one of the great themes in the world's religious and literary traditions, and as an antidote to contemporary obsessions with efficiency, productivity, and the purpose-driven life.  Adam and Eve were wanderers, as were Moses, Abraham, Jesus, Paul, and the Buddha.  Ulysses wanders across the pages of the Odyssey and the Pandhavas across the chapters of the Hindu epic the Mahabharata.  To wander is to move without destination into the unknown, and to open up to surprises.  But wandering is often disparaged as deviation and digression.  In his lectures, Professor Prothero will seek to redeem wandering from its critics by championing it as both practice and play. Although wandering aims at nothing, it is work of a sort.  And on occasion, it can do some of the hardest work of all:  liberating us from the tyranny of those voices – of parents and gods and friends and governments – that tell us (with authority, and sometimes coercive power) who to be, what to think, how to live.

The William Belden Noble Lectures were established at Harvard University in 1898 and claim an impressive roster of past lecturers including Theodore Roosevelt, H. Richard Niebuhr, Senator Eugene McCarthy, and Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie.  The Noble Lectures are free and open to the public.  For more information contact The Memorial Church at 617-495-5508 or e-mail to memorial_church@harvard.edu.

Click here for more information         

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Prof. Gina Cogan to speak at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University.

November 7 (Friday), 4:00-5:30PM, Harvard University

Porté Room S250, CGIS South Bldg, 1730 Cambridge St.
"Serving the Buddha through Serving the Emperor: Imperial Buddhist Monks and Nuns as Abbots, Abbesses, and Adoptees in Early Modern Japan"
GINA COGAN, Assistant Professor of Asian Religions, Boston University
Moderator: RYUICHI ABÉ, Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions, Harvard University
Reischauer Institute Japan Forum

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~rijs/programs/calendar.html
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What the Gods Demand: Blood Sacrifice in Mediterranean Antiquity

An interdisciplinary conference at Boston University

November 19-21, 2008 Click here for more information

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Prof. Paula Fredriksen lectures at Princeton University

The Spencer Trask Lectures at Princeton University were founded in 1881,
and have featured scholars in a wide variety of areas, from Niels Bohr to
Susan Sontag to Eric Hobsbaum to Alfred Kazin. In October 2007, PAULA
FREDRIKSEN had a turn. Her three lectures on “Sin: The Early History of
an Idea” provided an aerial survey of the vibrant vitality of the idea of sin in
the first Christian centuries. For ancient Christians, an impulsive bite of fruit
came to explain absolutely everything else, from the death of God’s son to
the power politics of the empire that eventually worshiped him. The lectures
will be transformed into a book, to be published by Princeton University Press.

"God, Blood, and the Temple" VideoNet 56K 350K 56K 350K

"Flesh and the Devil" VideoNet 56K 350K 56K 350K

"A Rivalry of Genius" VideoNet 56K 350K 56K 350K

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SHARI RABIN BLOGS FOR FAITHNET
It's not Facebook -- It's Faithbook, "a place where college students can discuss
a serious topic: their experiences with faith and religion." And CAS's own Shari
Rabin is amongst its inaugural six bloggers with her own "Chuztpah Chronicles."
Says Religion Department Chair Stephen Prothero, who had Rabin in his class,
"I knew she could write." The unergraduate "ask[ed] wonderful questions and
ma[de] sharp observations." Read the BU Today article on Rabin here!

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STEPHEN PROTHERO'S RELIGIOUS LITERACY NAMED QUILL WINNER
Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know - and Doesn't was named
a 2007 recipient of the Quill Book Award in the religion and spirituality category. The
annual honors are taped this year at the Lincoln Center in Washington, DC and will
be televised on October 27th on NBC. Read complete coverage of this news at
the BU Today website as well as Professor Prothero's own reaction at his site.

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THE RELIGION DEPARTMENT IS NOW OFFICIALLY HIP
On Monday, March 19, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart welcomed our own Professor Steve Prothero, who dropped by to discuss his new book Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — and Doesn't. Prothero, whose seven-minute appearance garnered him laughter and applause from the audience, even managed to receive an on-air book endorsement from Stewart, who described Religious Literacy as "a wonderful book, very interesting, and, for people who would normally be turned off — on either side — it presents a very nice, reasonable case." Most importantly, according to Prothero, "I didn't fall off my chair or throw up."

So, now that the interview is said and done, the real question remains-- what's Jon Stewart like in real life? "He's a great guy," says Prothero. "When he came backstage to meet me, he was very high-energy and welcoming. He's obviously funny. But he's also super smart."

For all who were not able to catch the show on Monday night see below or, if you have difficulty with the Flash video, click here.
And congratulations, Prof. Prothero — we are all now cooler by association.

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NEW PROTHERO BOOK POSES QUESTIONS ABOUT AMERICAN RELIGIOUS LITERACY
Congratulations to Department of Religion Chair Steve Prothero, whose new book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know-- and Doesn't (HarperSanFransisco, forthcoming March 13) has generated a wealth of media attention in recent days. Choose from the links below to read selected articles about Prof. Prothero's new book. Also, make sure to catch his upcoming appearance at BU's Barnes and Noble-- Tuesday, March 27 at 7PM (click here for more info).

• "The Case for Teaching the Bible," Time Magazine, March 22, 2007
• "The Gospel of Prothero," Newsweek, March 12, 2007
• "Holy Book Learning," The Boston Globe, March 4, 2007
• "Blind Faith," Washington Post, March 3, 2007