Graduate News
2024-2025 | 2023-2024 | 2022-2023 | 2021-2022 | 2020-2021 | 2019-2020 | 2018-2019
2024-2025
- Congratulations to Ray Buckner for receiving a Khyentse Foundation PhD Scholarship, awarded a grant of $5,000!
- Congratulations to Dhondup T. Rekjong for receiving a Khyentse Foundation PhD Scholarship for the project titled “Silence and Speech: Transmitting Tibetan Buddhism under Chinese Colonialism”, awarded a grant of $5,000!
- Congratulations to the Graduate Student co-chairs for making the 2024 conference on Desire and Intimacy in the Study of Religion a tremendous success!
- Congratulations to Ray Buckner for being awarded the Buffett Research Fellowship!
2023-2024
- Nisheeta Jagtiani successfully defended her dissertation, "Rimé: Impartiality in Tibetan Buddhism and Beyond." Congratulations Dr. Jagtiani! (July 3, 2024)
- Congratulations to Joshua Brallier for being awarded the Presidential Fellowship! This highly competitive award is the most prestigious fellowship awarded by Northwestern.
- Congratulations to Matthew Drew for being awarded "Buffett Summer Language Training Award" at Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal, and "Buffett Pre-Dissertation International Summer Research Grant" in Chengdu, China!!!
- Congratulations to Izzak Novak for being awarded a 2024 Northwestern-SSRC DPD Fellowship!
- Rachel Levy successfully defended her dissertation, "Do Clothes Make the Man?: Sartorial Rhetoric in the writings of Thirteenth to Seventeenth Century Drukpa Kagyu Masters." Congratulations Dr. Levy! (February 8, 2024)
- Congratulations to Nisheeta Jagtiani for earning Northwestern's South Asia Research Forum grant!
- "How Buddhism Met Science: A Monastic Scholar's Journey" by Dhondup T. Rekjong
- Congratulations to graduate student Ray Buckner on his Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on "Buddhism and Sexuality."
- Congratulations to graduate student Dhondup T. Rekjong for being awarded a 2024 Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in Buddhist Studies.
2022-2023
- Marlon Millner successfully defended his dissertation, “Without the Body, Within the Flesh – Blackness, Biopolitics, Spirit Baptism, and the Exilic Afterlife of Pentecostalism”. Congratulations Dr. Millner! (July 24, 2023)
- Congratulations to Joshua Shelton for having a new article piece accepted at the Journal of Tibetan Literature
- Congratulations to Dhondup T. Rekjong for receiving the Buffett Global Impacts Graduate Fellowship!
- Congratulations to Ray Buckner for being awarded a 2023 Northwestern-SSRC DPD Fellowship!
- "Opinion: We Need to Think about the Dalai Lama’s Actions Very Carefully" By Joshua Brallier Shelton
- Congratulations to Udita Das for receiving The Summer Language Grant from The Graduate School! (Summer 2023)
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"Destruction and Rebuilding: Two Years in the Life of a Tibetan Monk" By Dhondup Rekjong.
- Edu Uca was named to the 2021-2022 Associated Student Government Faculty & Administrator Honor Roll. She was nominated for her teaching in REL 369: Religion in the Digital Age (Winter Quarter 2022)!
- Ariel Schwartz has accepted a position as the director of the Emerging Leaders Program at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Congratulations Ariel!
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"Many Paths to Freedom: Transgender Buddhism in the United States" an article by Ray Buckner.
- James Howard Hill, Jr. successfully defended his dissertation, "Religion, (Anti)blackness, and Michael Jackson". Congratulations Dr. Hill! (July 22, 2022)
- Darcie Price-Wallace who successfully defended her dissertation, “Telling Stories Differently: Changing Landscapes of Ordination for Buddhist Monastic Women in the Tibetan Tradition." Congratulations Dr. Price-Wallace! (July 18, 2022)
- Darcie Price-Wallace won the George Bond Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching in Spring 2022.
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Dhondup T. Rekjong has received a Conference Travel Award from the Northwestern Buffett Institute for his
travel to Prague, Czech Republic, to present at the Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies (IATS) in July 2022. - Udita Das has received a graduate student fellowship from the South Asia Research Forum (SARF) to support her Sanskrit summer language program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in July 2022.
- Marlon Millner has been awarded a Dissertation Fellowship from the Louisville Institute.
- Ray Buckner received SPAN Conference Funding for Graduate Students, which funded a conference presentation at the UCR Conference for Queer and Transgender Studies of Religion. He also received a Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin-Madison for third-year Thai language study at SEASSI through the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a SEASSI Summer Tuition Grant.
- Another good news for Amanda Gvozden on her Lowden-Wigmore Prize for one of the best-written articles at the Northwestern Pritzker Law journal! Amanda Gvozden also received her J.D. this quarter, after resuming work on the Ph.D. side of her J.D./Ph.D. program. Congratulations, Amanda!
- Congratulations to Amanda Gvozden on receiving an Interdisciplinary Graduate Assistantship for Legal Studies for 2022-23.
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.
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"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.
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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
- Joshua Shelton won the George Bond Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching in Spring 2021.
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Dhondup Tashi Rekjong, featured in TGS Spotlight.
- Congratulations to James Howard Hill, Jr., who will be starting a position as Assistant Professor of Religion and Race at the University of Oklahoma in the Fall!
- Congratulations to PhD Candidate James Howard Hill, Jr. for two wonderful earned opportunities. James has been named a fellow in the 2021 Sacred Writes cohort, a Public Scholarship on Religion. James also recently published the piece, "The Black Church and the Black Fantastic: Black Religious Experience in Popular Culture," which is a part of a larger forum on "The Black Church in American Public Life." Congratulations, James, on both of these accomplishments!
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"On Transgender Day of Visibility, A Call to Protect Trans Youth", by Ray Buckner.
- Congratulations to Somtsobum, Ray Buckner, Rekjong, Nisheeta Jagtiani and Darcie Price-Wallace on their 2020-21 grants and scholarships.
- In Spring 2020, Marlon Millner received a graduate internship in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Arch Scholars program for the 2020-2021 academic year! As a member of the Arch Scholars team, he will supervise a team of motivated undergraduates who have volunteered to mentor small groups of first-year students from first-generation or low-income backgrounds.
- Congratulations to Darcie Price-Wallace for receiving the 2020-21 Research Scholarship from Khyentse Foundation in support of her dissertation project.
- Congratulations to Dhondup Rekjong for receiving the prestigious Dalai Lama Graduate Scholarship, this summer.
- RS Graduate Student Statement in Solidarity with Protesters
- Another great news for Eda Uca, who has received a Graduate Assistant position with HEFNU (Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University) for 2020-21.
- Congratulations to Eda Uca who has received the Religious Studies George Bond Graduate Teaching Award.
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"Are religious communities reviving the revival? In the US, outdoor worship has a long tradition" by Jeffrey Wheatley.
2019-2020
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"Skokie Lagoons/Kitchi-wap chocu" by Matthew J. Smith.
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Fire-dance, Fire-eating, Fire-breathing, and Church Fires!
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Congratulations to Jeffrey Wheatley who will be joining the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Iowa State University as a tenure-track Assistant Professor.
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Congratulations to Nisheeta Jagtiani, who has received a GRG from the Graduate School to work on her research!
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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.”
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Congratulations to Matthew J. Smith, who has won the 2019-2020 Louisville Institution Dissertation Fellowship!
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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
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Congratulations to Jeff Wheatley, who has been elected as a Franke Graduate Fellow for 2018-19.
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Congratulations to James Hill! He has been selected as a Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development Program Participant for 2018-2019. See more about the program here: SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development Program
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Marlon Millner, a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies, had an OpEd piece published in the daily newspaper in Memphis, TN about a large Pentecostal Christian denomination and its connection to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Matt Smith, a doctoral student in Religious Studies, has published a new article called, "Settler Colonialism and U.S. Home Missions" in the Oxford Encyclopedia of religion.