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Graduate News

2025-2026 | 2024-2025  | 2023-2024 | 2022-2023 | 2021-2022 | 2020-2021 | 2019-2020 | 2018-2019


2025-2026

2024-2025

2023-2024

2022-2023

2021-2022

  • Matthew Drew received a Mellon Cluster Fellowship in 2021 in Asian Studies and a 2022 Northwestern Summer Language Grant for travel and study in India.
  • Nisheeta Jagtiani received an International Dissertation Research Grant (IDRG) from the American Academy of Religion and a Dalai Lama Fellowship for Nalanda Studies from The Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
  • Carlos Recarte received his M.A. in Religious Studies during the Fall Quarter. Congratulations, Carlos! 
  • Eda Uca was the Lead Instructor on the course REL 369/HUM 325: Religion in the Digital Age in 2021-22. 
  • "Xi Jinping’s War on Tibetan Buddhism" by PhD student Dhondup T. Rekjong.

  • We are excited to celebrate Lily Stewart's first article, "Leprosy, Chastity, and Desire in Medieval Hagiography."  in the Summer 2021 issue of Magistra, a journal of women's spirituality in history. 
  • Congratulations to Nisheeta Jagtiani on her AAR International Dissertation Research Grant!

  • Dhondup Rekjong has been awarded the Dalai Lama Graduate Scholarship for 2021-22, for the second year in a row. Congratulations Rekjong!
  • Matt Smith successfully defended his dissertation, “The Age of Plastic(s): Race, Religion, Ecology, and the Biopolitics of Conversion” last month and will be starting as Visiting Assistant Professor of Race and Religion at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. Congratulations Dr. Smith!
  • Miranda Smith has been awarded a fellowship from the China-U.S. Scholars Program from the Institute of International Education for academic year 2021-2022. The award will allow Miranda to carry out fieldwork in China! Congratulations Miranda!
  • Congratulations to Matthew Smith who has been appointed as Visiting Assistant Professor of Race and Religion at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts starting this Fall.

2020- 2021

2019-2020

  • "Skokie Lagoons/Kitchi-wap chocu" by Matthew J. Smith.

  • Fire-dance, Fire-eating, Fire-breathing, and Church Fires!

  • Congratulations to Jeffrey Wheatley who will be joining the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Iowa State University as a tenure-track Assistant Professor.

  • Congratulations to Nisheeta Jagtiani, who has received a GRG from the Graduate School to work on her research!

  • Congratulations to Courtney Rabada, who has accepted a Graduate Assistantship position in the Gender & Sexuality Studies Program for the 2019-20 school year! She will be teaching a course in the Fall titled, “Powerful & Dangerous: The Life, Times and Theory on Audre Lorde.”

  • Congratulations to Matthew J. Smith, who has won the 2019-2020 Louisville Institution Dissertation Fellowship!

  • Congratulations to Miranda Smith who has been elected as a Fulbright scholar for 2019-20. Miranda's research project will focus on how Tibetan laywomen use evocative literary forms to discuss religion and evoke religious affect. Through research in Qinghai, China from 2019-2020, she will also examine how Tibetan poet Wo Jik Jil, and the Tibetan women poets in the region, elicit religious emotion through creative adaptation of a variety of poetic and song traditions. 

2018-2019