DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Faculty Research Areas

Kevin Buckelew

• Chinese Buddhism
• Chan/Zen Buddhism
• Chinese Buddhist apocryphal scriptures
• Interactions between Buddhism and Daoism
• Gender, sexuality, and the body

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

• Religion and State
• Religion, Law & Politics
• Political Theory/Political Theology

Brannon Ingram

• Islam in South Asia
• Islam in South Africa
• Sufism
• Islamic Law
• Traditionally educated Muslim religious scholars (ulama)
• The Deoband movement

Sarah Jacoby

• Tibetan Buddhist Studies
• Buddhist literature
• Gender and sexuality studies
• Auto/biography studies

Mark McClish

• Religion in classical South Asia
• Hindu law (dharmaśāstra) and Statecraft (arthaśāstra)
• Sanskrit language and literature
• Textual criticism
• Law and religion
• Politics and religion

KB Dennis Meade

• Africana Religion
• African Diaspora Studies
• Religion and Ethnography
• Global Pentecostalism
• Religion and Politics
• Caribbean Studies
• Digital Humanities 

Michelle Molina

• History of Christianity in early modern Europe and Latin America, with emphasis on the Society of Jesus and colonial Mexico
• Early modern natural and moral philosophy
• Interested in the space where critical theory meets social science

Robert Orsi

• American Catholicism in both historical and ethnographic perspective
• Theory and method for the study of religion

Sarah Taylor

• American Religion and Culture
• Religion and Ecology
• Gender Studies
• Green Religion
• Green Culture
• Women and Religion in America
• Religion and Popular Culture
• Theories of Religion and Culture

Barry Wimpfheimer

• Classical Rabbinic Literature
• Babylonian Talmud
• The relationship between law and literature as both a general theoretical question and within the Jewish tradition