Religious Spring06k.Indd

Indiana University Vol. 24/No. 2 • Spring 2006 From the chair Recurring cycles charactize department’s activities I write from the center of a whirlwind “Sustainability: The Campus-Community new graduate students. This year five new created by the tail end of another busy Connection.” This year’s speakers included doctoral students join us: Joy Brennan, semester. It is hard to believe that one Bloomington City Council President Andy Nicole Karapanagiotis, Barbara Krawcow- more year is coming to a close, but the Ruff and Councilmember Dave Rolo, icz, Yamine Mermer, and Brad Storin; and bare trees on campus provide testament who spoke on “Sustainable Bloomington: one new student has entered our master’s to the passage of time. When the semester Adapting Our City for a Green Future,” program: Cheryl Cottine. We also held a began these same trees were adorned with and Peter Bane, a master permaculture welcome-back party for our energetic under- robust green foliage that shaded the newly teacher, who spoke on “Education from a graduates, which was organized by our new returned students from an intense sun. Permaculture Perspective.” Five workshops undergraduate adviser and communications As we approached midterm, their leaves explored new urbanism, youth activism, officer, April Lane. Having received both turned brilliant shades of red and gold, transformative language, urban agriculture, her BA and MA from our department, April and the students stretched out in the direct and transportation for the new century. knows our world well. sunshine to enjoy their beauty. Then, finals We began our departmental celebrations With a mixture of sorrow and delight, were upon us, and campus emptied as ev- this fall in the glass atrium of the IU Art the department is preparing for another eryone scattered for winter break. The tall Museum with a welcoming party for our (continued on page 2) silent sentinels guarded the campus until the students returned and began to move toward the new growth that lies ahead. Recurring cycles characterize much Mary Jo Weaver to retire in May 2006 of our life here at Indiana University. I hile we wish Mary Jo Weaver prepared for my third year as chair after Wthe very best for a well-deserved another busy summer, highlighted with retirement, Sycamore Hall will not be a 10-day backpacking trip in the high the same without her! Weaver, esteemed country of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in scholar and innovator of courses such as California after finishing the manuscript for Star Trek and Religion, will retire this my forthcoming book on the Yamuna River May after 31 years at Indiana University. of India. I participated in yet another excit- In keeping with departmental tradi- ing permaculture course at the Lazy Black tion, Weaver will give a public lecture, Bear retreat in the middle of the Hoosier titled “As Much Fun Learning as National Forest, where students studied Teaching,” at 4 p.m. in Woodburn Hall design systems for creating sustainable hu- 101, on Friday, April 7, followed by a man communities that are in harmony with reception to mark her retirement at 5 their natural environment. And I traveled p.m. The lecture location will be posted to Santa Fe, N.M., to help plan another soon on the our Web site (www.indiana. Bioneers Conference (www.bioneers.org). edu/~relstud), and, following the Bioneers is a global educational forum to lecture, the reception will be held in the showcase practical and visionary solutions University Club of the Indiana Memo- for restoring the Earth and its people. IU rial Union. Mary Jo Weaver was one of 17 sites this year to host live Please mark your calendars for this ing from out of town. Please call (800) downlink satellite conferences that broad- very special event — all are most wel- 209-8145 to make your reservation and cast the inspirational national program from come! A block of hotel rooms has been mention the religious studies/Weaver San Rafael, Calif., and included local talks reserved at the Indiana Memorial Union retirement event. Rooms will be held and workshops. This was IU’s third Bloom- on campus for those who will be travel- until March 23, 2006. ington Bioneers Conference, focusing on 1 of Jan Nattier and John McRae, who are have joined us as adjunct members of the From the chair leaving IU to take up permanent research Department of Religious Studies. Edward (continued from page 1) positions in Japan. They will be missed Linenthal, who received a PhD in religious monumental retirement this spring. On sorely, but we wish them well in their new studies from the University of California– April 7, 2006, we will celebrate the long academic adventure on the other side of the Santa Barbara, has published several books and illustrious career of Mary Jo Weaver, a Pacific. on American religions and is currently the renowned scholar of American religions, on Although we are losing a few distin- editor of the Journal of American History. the occasion of her retirement at the end guished members of the department, the Edward Watts, who received a PhD in of this academic year. Mary Jo will give a remaining faculty members have been very history from Yale University, is a specialist public lecture at 4 p.m. on April 7 titled, productive. I count amongst our faculty’s in the religions of late antiquity and has “As Much Fun Learning as Teaching.” Her publications 12 books that either were published widely in this area. Moreover, talk will be followed by a reception in the published within the last year or are cur- we continue to be active in our searches University Club. Please plan to join us for rently in press. Many of these will be listed for new faculty. At this point in time, I can what promises to be a memorable event. in the “Faculty News.” I am also delighted say nothing definitive about some exciting See our Web site for further information. to announce that two professors in the developments under way, but watch for It is with a degree of sadness that I also Department of History word in the summer 2006 newslet- inform you of the departure ter about new faculty hires. I close as I prepare to travel to India to conduct preliminary research for my next book project on tree shrines and to see my daughter Meagan, an IU religious studies major who is currently spending the year in Banaras, India, on a University of Wisconsin program. Before I leave, I want to encour- age you all to stay in touch with the department. — David Haberman David Haberman, first row, third from right, with the 2005 permaculture class as they prepare to depart for Hoosier National Bioneers 2005 2 Faculty news Faculty news David Brakke has become the editor of the Department welcomes Lisa Sideris Journal of Early Christian Studies, which is sponsored by the North American Patristics he Department of Religious Studies is thrilled to welcome a familiar face back Society and published by Johns Hopkins Tto IU! Lisa Sideris earned her PhD in our department in 2000 and returned in University Press. In the summer of 2005, 2005 as religious studies faculty. Before coming back to IU, Sideris taught at Pace the editorial office moved to IU from Duke University for one year and at McGill University for three University, and doctoral candidate Ellen years. Sideris’s research interests lie at the intersection of Muehlberger now serves as the journal’s religion, science, and environmental ethics. She is especially editorial assistant. In June 2005, Brakke interested in locating common ground between religious and gathered with other scholars of early Egyp- evolutionary accounts of nature and natural suffering, as well tian monasticism at Yale University to begin as the current controversies surrounding evolutionary theory, a long-term project of editing the discours- such as “intelligent design.” She has recently completed an es of Shenoute of Atripe, who led the large edited collection of interdisciplinary essays on the life and White Monastery in Egypt from about 385 work of Rachel Carson. Sideris will be teaching courses for to 465 C.E. Shenoute’s numerous works, the department on environmental ethics, medical ethics, and which survive fragmentarily in the original evolution and ethics in the coming months. Lisa Sideris Coptic, provide some of the most exten- sive and vivid evidence for monastic life in this early period. In October 2005, Brakke Studies, Indiana University (2005). In munities,” Early Medieval China workshop, gave a paper titled “Care for the Poor and 2005 he published “The Meanings of Columbia University, December 2005; Fear of Poverty: Monastic Cultivation of Cuisines of Transcendence in Late Classi- and in early January 2006 he traveled to Economic and Spiritual Vulnerability in cal and Early Medieval China,” T’oung Pao Singapore to deliver a paper at a confer- Fourth-Century Egypt” at a conference 91 (2005):1-57; “Living off the Books: ence on early medieval Chinese religion on Wealth and Poverty in Early Christian- Fifty Ways to Dodge Ming [Preallotted and thought. In addition, Campany was ity, hosted by the Stephen and Catherine Lifespan] in Early Medieval China,” in The elected in 2005 to serve another term (after Pappas Patristic Institute, Holy Cross Magnitude of Ming: Command, Allotment, having served two terms in the 1990s) on Greek Orthodox School of Theology, in and Fate in Chinese Culture, C. Lupke, the board of directors for the Society for Brookline, Mass. At the annual meetings of ed., University of Hawaii Press, 129- the Study of Chinese Religions, the main the American Academy of Religion and the 150; “Long-Distance Specialists in Early international professional society in the area Society of Biblical Literature in Philadelphia Medieval China,” in Literature, Religion, of Chinese religions.

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