PEOPLE
Affiliated Faculty
AFRICAN STUDIES
James Pritchett, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of Boston University's African Studies Center. His research has focused on the Lunda-Ndembu people famously studied by Victor Turner, as well as on African diaspora peoples. He is concerned with the ways in which social change is interpreted and validated according to local beliefs.
ANTHROPOLOGY
Robert W. Hefner is Professor of Anthropology, Associate Director of CURA, where he directs the program on Islam and civil society. Hefner has carried out research on religion and politics in Southeast Asia for the past twenty-eight years, and has conducted comparative research on Muslim culture and politics since the late-1980s.
Nancy Smith-Hefner, Associate Professor of Anthropology. She has done research on Buddhism and cultural adaptation among Khmer in the United States, and since the late 1990s she has been working on questions of marriage, sexuality, and romance among Muslim youth in Indonesia.
Robert P. Weller, Professor of Anthropology and Research Associate at CURA. He has concentrated on China in comparative perspective, ranging from a critical examination of the role of culture in East Asian business to the latest changes in Chinese religion.
Jenny White, Associate Professor of Anthropology. Author of a prize-winning recent book on Muslim politics in Turkey, she combines that work with on-going interests in women and family life in Islam.
HISTORY
Barbara Diefendorf, Professor of History. Her work includes the social, political, and cultural history of early modern Europe, particularly sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French history, urban history, history of the family, and women and gender. Her current research is on the culture and politics of the Catholic Reformation in France.
Richard A. Landes, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for Millennial Studies. His work focuses on social history, particularly on the role of various kinds of religious discourse in relations between elites and commoners. He has especially focused on the role of apocalyptic expectations in Western culture from the origins of Christianity to the present, including the many manifestations that surrounded the year 2000.
Jon H. Roberts, Professor of History. An American intellectual historian, he has special interests in the history of Anglo-American religious thought and the relationship between science and religion. Among his current projects is a book dealing with the efforts of mainstream American Protestant intellectuals during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries to defend the privileged status of mind--divine and human--in the face of a series of challenges from forces associated with "modernity."
Jeffrey Rubin, Associate Professor of History and Research Associate at CURA. His research on Latin America focuses on the historical, cultural, and religious origins of grassroots activism and the ways in which social movements contribute to the deepening of democracy by establishing forms of voice and autonomy in "non-political" locations. He currently heads a workshop project, "Religion, Social Movements, and Progressive Reform in the Americas," bringing together scholars of social movements and scholars of religion in Latin America and the US.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Augustus Norton, Professor of International Relations and Anthropology. His recent research has taken up the question of civil society in the Middle East and renewal in reformist Muslim thought.
Elizabeth Prodromou, Assistant Professor of International Relations and Research Associate at CURA. A regional expert on Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, she is also writing on Orthodox Christianity in American public life and on Orthodox Christianity, democracy and markets in post-communist Russia.
MEDICINE
Linda Barnes, Associate Professor, Departments of Pediatrics and Family Medicine, School of Medicine, and Director, Boston Healing Landscape Project. This project uses Boston as a laboratory for documenting the growing religious diversity of the United States and the corresponding emergence of a richly textured world of culturally and religiously grounded complementary and alternative medicine.
Lance Laird, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine, is Assistant Director of the Masters Program in Medical Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Practice and a senior consultant to the Boston Healing Landscape Project. His interests and work focus on Muslim cultural pluralism in the U.S., and related implications of Muslim understandings of illness, healing, medicine, and complementary therapies. He is also conducting research on the roles of congregations in public health.
RELIGION
Kecia Ali, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies. She teaches classes that explore the diversity and complexity of Islamic expression and experience in both classical and modern periods. Her research interests center on Islamic religious texts, especially jurisprudence, and women in both classical and contemporary Muslim discourses. She is the author of Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur'an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence (2006) In addition to her current book in progress - Marriage, Gender, and Ownership in Early Islamic Jurisprudence - she is also working on a biography of the jurist al-Shafi'i.
Donna Freitas, Assistant Professor of Religion. Much of her writing, teaching, and lecturing centers around struggles of belonging and alienation with regard to faith, particularly among young adults and especially with regard to young women.
Frank J. Korom, Associate Professor of Religion and Anthropology. His research and teaching interests range from South Asian contemporary religion to diaspora studies and transnationalism, all of which comes together in his work on East Indians in the Caribbean and the global community of Tibetan refugees.
Hillel Levine, Professor of Sociology and Religion. His interests include Holocaust studies and American Jewish history and sociology.
Stephen Prothero, Professor of Religion and Chairman of the Department of Religion and Director of the Graduate Division of Religious and Theological Studies. A historian of American religion, Professor Prothero specializes in Asian religious traditions in the United States.
Dana Robert, Truman Collins Professor of World Mission and Co-Director of the Center for Global Christianity and Mission. Having written the definitive history of women in the international mission movement, she continues to work in mission history and the history of world Christianity, especially on the many expressions of Christianity in southern Africa.
Adam Seligman, Professor of Religion and Research Associate at CURA. He has made important contributions to thinking about the role of religion in the modern world and is currently working on the problem of religion and toleration. Part of this work is devoted to establishing school curricula for teaching tolerance from a religious perspective. In this endeavor he is working with colleagues in Berlin, Sarajevo and Jerusalem.
SOCIOLOGY
Nancy T. Ammerman, Professor of Sociology of Religion, School of Theology and Department of Sociology and Research Associate at CURA. She has written extensively on fundamentalism and on American religious organizations. Her most recent research concerns the formation of religious identities in an everyday world shaped by both secular and religious narratives.
Emily Barman, Assistant Professor of Sociology. Her research examines the changing nature of the nonprofit sector and includes attention to the sociology of religious bureaucracies.
David Swartz, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology. A renowned expert on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, his research also includes work on non-profit organizations and on intellectuals and politics.
UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS
Charles Lindholm, Professor in the University Professors Program and in the Department of Anthropology. His work includes books on charisma and on the Islamic Middle East, as well as long-term research on idealization and culture.
WOMEN'S STUDIES
Shahla Haeri, Director of the Women's Studies Program and Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Boston University. She has conducted research in Iran, Pakistan, and India, and has written extensively on religion, law, and gender dynamics in the Muslim world.
Current Doctoral Students
Sumanto Al Qurtuby | Anthropology | mantous@bu.edu
His academic interests include conflict transformation, peacebuilding, Sinology, civic pluralism, interfaith dilalog, and anything related to Islamic studies and Muslim cultures.
Kimberly Arkin | Anthropology | karkin@uchicago.edu
PhD candidate at the University of Chicago, now living in Boston. She is finishing a dissertation on the articulation of citizenship and religion among North African Jewish youth in Paris.
Jose Campanella | Political Science | jgcampanella@msn.com
He is interested in studying the effects that specific Institutes of the Christian religion have on individual behavior, especially on the formation of preferences that are essential for institutional and economic development.
En-Chieh Chao | Anthropology | zolachao@bu.edu
PhD Candidate. She studies religious revitalization movements in late modern times, particularly Islamic resurgence, along with other issues including gender, identity politics, ethnic conflict and nationalism.
Jane Cormuss | American and New England Studies | jcormuss@bu.edu
She will pursue her interests in the relationship between science and religion in modern American society, looking at the degree to which different systems of belief relate to patterns of faith and rationality in the modern world.
Constance Cramer | University Professors | ccramer@bu.edu
Her interest is in mysticism in the Middle Ages.
Sean Delmore | School of Theology
Sarah Mount Elewononi | School of Theology | smount@bu.edu
Her interests are in ritual change and in how ritual influences identity formation. Her dissertation will look at Camp Meetings as a movement which attracted people to the newly forming Methodist Churches of New England.
Ada Focer | Religious and Theological Studies (DRTS) | afocer@bu.edu
She is interested in the relationship between 20th century religious life and social thought and social action, particularly among mainline Protestants post-World War II.
Navid Fozi | Anthropology
He is working in Iran, studying a sect called Ahl-e Haqq (lit, Followers of the Truth).
Sarah Bruff Garlington | Sociology/Social Work
Sarah's research focuses on cross national comparisons in religion and social welfare policy structures.
Meg Gatza | Religion and Society (DRTS) | megatza@bu.edu
Her research interests include: feminist philosophy of religion, religious pluralism and youth/young adults, and modern Hinduism
Sara Georgini | History | sarage@bu.edu
Sara studies American religious history, with a special
emphasis on Revolutionary Anglicanism, as well as the pluralist impulse
in nineteenth-century interfaith dialogue. My current research focuses
on how fast-day sermons fashioned a national design of Christian
morality in the early American republic.
Lindsay Gifford | Anthropology | lgifford@bu.edu
She is preparing to return to Syria in September to study the types of Islam and religious understandings that derive out of a diverse religious (and Muslim) social context as in Syria, with its 'Alawi led government and large minorities of 'Alawis, Christians, Shi'i, and Druze competing with a Sunni majority.
Julian Gotobed | School of Theology
Trelawney Grenfell-Muir | UNI Religion & International Relations | kernowes@bu.edu
Her focus is on the role of religion in conflict. Specifically, she hopes to examine the role of mid-level clergy in Christianity and Islam, and the impact of their interpretations of religious doctrines on exacerbating or ameliorating conflict. She plans to conduct field research in Northern Ireland and Lebanon in the spring and summer of 2007.
Daryl Healy | School of Education | dhealea@bu.edu
He is doing a dissertation on Daniel Marsh's philosophy of character education.
Amy Moff Hudec | Sociology | moff@bu.edu
Her interests include religion, gender, and media. Her dissertation will focus on the agentic dimension of women within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She is a co-investigator working with Dr. Nancy Ammerman on the Spiritual Narratives in Everyday Life project.
Cristine Hutchison-Jones | Religious and Theological Studies (DRTS)
Cristine entered the Religion and Society specialization in the Boston University Division of Religious and Theological Studies in 2001 as a post-BA PhD student. Her area of interest is the religious history of the United States with particular focus on the history of Christianity and religious intolerance, especially anti-Catholicism and anti-Mormonism. She is working on a dissertation on non-Mormon representations of the Latter-day Saints in America since 1890.
Kapya Kaoma | School of Theology | Kaoma8john@yahoo.com
His interests are mission history, social history and political developments in Southern Africa, with special attention to the environment. He is investigating the ecological implications of manifestations of God and Spirits in nature.
Roddy Knowles | Religious and Theological Studies (DRTS) | roddy4@gmail.com
His interests are in 19th and 20th century religion in America. His recent projects have focused on contemporary Evangelicalism and also on the relationship between Spiritualists and Christians in the 19th century.
Jonathan G. Koefoed | History | jkoefoed@gmail.com
His interests include intellectual history, religious history, 19th century history, and environmental history.
Melinda Krokus | University Professors | mkrokus@bu.edu
Her general interest in Sufism has recently focused on the Turkish Sufi musical tradition in Turkey and the Turkish diaspora including France, Germany, Bosnia, and the United States.
Joe Laycock | DRTS
Joe is interested in the production of meaning and identity in modern American society. He hopes to study the meaning worlds of adolescents with the practical goal of informing public policy regarding religion and secondary education.
Terry Lewis | Social Work & Sociology
Katie Light | Sociology | klight@bu.edu
Katie's interests are in studying clergy education, particularly the processes of teaching, learning, and then applying philosophies, values, and theologies of different faith traditions.
Kristen Lucken | Religious and Theological Studies (DRTS)
Gift Makwasha | School of Theology
Scott Marr | History
Mentor Mustafa | Anthropology | mentor@bu.edu
His fieldwork is an assessment of the religious revival in post-communist Albania with interests in Sufism, religious experience, islamic mysticism, charismatic authority, and secrecy.
Paula Pryce | Anthropology |ppryce@bu.edu
Paula studies Anthropology of Christian Monasticism with a special interest in perception in relation to ritual, and monasticism in urban North America.
Michelle Robinson | American Studies | mmrobins@bu.edu
Her interests are in American Literature, Film and 19th & 20th century American Religious History, including sectarian movements.
Emily Ronald | DRTS | ekronald@bu.edu
Emily is interested in intersection of religion and culture in modern America, in particular reading practices and their effect on religious communities, and the appropriation of narratives from non-religious settings or other traditions into people's religious and spiritual lives.
Martin Rowe | Sociology | mtrowe@bu.edu
Martin is interested in migration to and within the Global South and
how transient migrants in Arab host states establish and perpetuate
enduring communities of faith and institutions such as international
churches and schools.
Leonardo Augusto Schiocchet | Anthropology | schio@bu.edu
A Fullbright Scholar from Brazil, he is studying religion, identity, and politics in Lebanon.
Per Smith | Religious and Theological Studies (DRTS) | smithp@bu.edu
He will soon be commencing dissertation fieldwork on an emergent form of secular ritual practice in the United States. He is generally interested in rites of passage, non-institutional modes of "spirituality," and the relationship between ritual and "meaning" production in post-industrial societies.
Kevin Taylor | Religious and Theological Studies (DRTS) | kmtaylor@bu.edu
Kevin's focus is on American religion. His interests include the contemporary and historical relationship between religion and culture, issues of religious diversity, "lived moral philosophy," and the moral and religious facets of education. His dissertation will examine the degree of coherence among American visions of a good life as seen through the lens of what parents from a variety of religious and non-religious communities want for their children.
Douglas Tzan | Religious and Theological Studies (DRTS) | dtzan@bu.edu
He is a student in the History of Christianity, with a special interest in mission history and world Christianity.
Jim Wallace | International Relations and Religion | jcw53@bu.edu
Roman R. Williams | Sociology | people.bu.edu/rrw
His interests include religion, culture, and globalization. His dissertation explores the construction of identity, exercise of agency, and globalization of religion and culture among evangelical international students. He is a co-investigator working with Dr. Nancy Ammerman on the Spiritual Narratives in Everyday Life project.
Stephen Young | University Professors
Muslims in Boston.
