SPRING 2011 The Department of Religion at Florida State University INSIDE THIS ISSUE Greetings from the chair In Memoriam: Dear Friends, Charles Wellborn 2 I am pleased to be able to invite you to read and share Faculty in Focus the recreated Religion Department Newsletter. The depart- 3 ment has been exceptionally lively over the past few years, Undergraduate with lectures, symposia, program innovations, awards, new faces, and many achievements and stories that reflect the sparkling intellectual and social life here in Dodd Hall. We will In Action 6 be reporting on these developments in this newsletter and those to come, on a planned schedule of two issues per year. We are eager to renew contacts with alumni, to make new Grad Student Spotlight friends, and to give stronger shape to the community of all of those who have been associ- 8 ated with the department over the last forty-six years. We would be delighted to hear from Graduate you, and we hope that you will stop in to see us when you are in town. The annual Graduate Student Symposium would be a good occasion for a visit, as would the special lectures that Student Symposium 10 are held periodically throughout the year. Inside you will find information on our Religion Club facebook page and other kinds of connections that we hope you will explore. We look forward to hearing from you! Grad students Shannon John Corrigan Dunn and Rosemary Lucius Moody Bristol Distinguished Professor Kellison received the 2009 Elisabeth Schüssler Chair, Religion Department Fiorenza New Scholar’s Award. page 8 Philosophy (REP), and Religions of Western Department Launches New Graduate Area in Antiquity (RWA). And, of course, there are clear and obvious connections with a number of units History and Ethnography of Religions throughout the university, such as Asian Studies, he addition of new faculty in Islam, to inaugurate a new field of study called “History Middle Eastern Studies, Women’s Studies, Art TChristianity, and African Religions and Ethnography of Religions” (HER). This area History, and Anthropology. has provided an exciting opportunity for the offers MA and PhD students the opportunity The presence of three prominent scholars of department to reconfigure one of the major to study a broad range of religious and cultural Asian Religions means that the department will components of its graduate curriculum. For al- traditions using a variety of methodological ap- continue to have a high national and internation- most twenty years, the study of the religions of proaches. al profile in this area and to attract graduate stu- South and East Asia has been one of the four The interdisciplinary character of the new dents from around the world who want to study major fields of the FSU graduate program. In field of study can be immediately recognized with them. Bryan Cuevas, the Religion Depart- Fall 2009 Professors Bryan Cuevas (Tibetan by the diversity of the training and interests of ment’s Director of Graduate Studies, specializes and Himalayan Buddhism), Kathleen Erndl the faculty members directing it. The oppor- in Tibetan religion, history, and culture and has (South Asian Religions), and Jimmy Yu (Re- tunity for crossing disciplinary boundaries is been widely recognized as a leader in his field ligions of China) joined forces with Professors expanded even more because the area can draw since the publication of his first book, The Hidden François Dupuigrenet Desroussilles (Medieval on the expertise of the faculty in the other three History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Oxford). and Early Modern Christianity), Adam Gaiser departmental areas of graduate study - American Kathleen (Islam), and Joseph Hellweg (African Religions) Religious History (ARH), Religion, Ethics, and Erndl began continued on page 11 RECENT ENDOWMENTS Lectures The Charles Wellborn Lecture in American Religious History: John F. Priest Professorship of Religion, Daniel Walker Howe, Oxford University and University of Cali- endowed by Gloria Priest in honor of her fornia, Los Angeles, “What God Hath Wrought: The Transfor- husband, who was a distinguished member mation of America, 1815-1848,” Jan 21, 2010. of the department from 1968 to his retire- ment in 1996. Bryan Cuevas was named Keynote Address for the Ninth Annual Graduate Symposium: Priest Professor in 2009. Bernadette Brooten, Brandeis University, “Beyond Slavery: Over- coming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies,” Feb 19, 2010. The Sheng Yen Educational Foundation Professorship of Chi- The Tessa J. Bartholomeusz Lecture in Religion:Luis Gomez, nese Buddhism University of Michigan, “Distorted Views: Buddhism with a ‘Self’? The Inversion of Traditional Categories in the [Mahayana] Sheng Yen Educational Foundation Graduate Fellowships Mahaparinirvana Maha Sutra,” March 13, 2010. The Jason Driver Graduate Scholarship The Lucius Moody Bristol Lecture in Social Ethics:Richard Miller, Indiana University, “Religion, Public Reason, and the The Chair’s Fund endowed by Gloria Priest, Robert Spivey, and Morality of Democratic Authority,” Oct. 12, 2010. Walter Moore. Jonathan Chan, Hong Kong Baptist University, “Law and Mo- The Charles Wellborn Lecture in American Religious History. rality: A Confucian Perspective on Freedom of Expression,” Oct. The first Wellborn lecture was given by Daniel Walker Howe, 23, 2010. January 21, 2010 (see “In Memoriam: Charles Wellborn” below). Michael Pasquier, Louisiana State University, “Standard Lives: Visualizing Oil and Religion in Louisiana,” Nov. 10, 2010. Tessa J. Bartholomeusz Lecture and Keynote Address for Tenth Annual Graduate Symposium: “‘Spiritual Exercise’ and In Memoriam: Charles the Interpretation of Buddhist Philosophy in India,” Matthew Kapstein, University of Chicago and École Pratique des Hautes Wellborn (1924-2009) Études, Paris, Feb. 18, 2011. e are saddened to report Wthe death of Charles Wellborn, who died Oct. 1, 2009. Charles began teaching in the Reli- gion Department in 1965, the first year it became an independent de- partment. He was a decorated World FOR AN UPDATED LIST, VISIT RELIGION.FSU.EDU War II veteran who had been a mem- ber of the ski patrol stationed in Italy. He had a national reputation as a Southern Baptist preacher from the time of clopedic knowledge of theatre was one of the THE DEPARTMENT his youth and became the senior pastor of the primary reasons he was chosen to head the OF RELIGION prominent Seventh and James Baptist Church FSU London program, beginning in 1976 in Waco, Texas, where he successfully led the until his retirement in 1990. He published at The Florida State University fight for desegregation. Charles received his seven books and over a hundred articles and PhD from Duke in 1964, where he began essays. With Leo Sandon and George Bedell his work on Walter Lippmann, which led to of the Religion Department, he wrote Reli- Newsletter his 1969 book, Twentieth Century Pilgrimage: gion in America, a popular survey, which was SPRING 2011 Walter Lippmann and the Public Philosophy. first published in 1975. His last book, Grits, While at FSU, he was an award-winning Grace, and Goodness, a collection of his essays, teacher, who taught a variety of courses in- was published in 2003 by Smith and Helwys. Editor cluding Religion and Ethics, Religion in the In 2008, he established in the FSU Religion David Levenson United States, and Religion and Drama. He Department the Charles Wellborn Lecture in was also an accomplished actor, whose ency- American Religious History. Design Wil Oakes 2 The Florida State University dam Gaiser joined the department in Athe fall of 2006 as a specialist on Islam. He has taught classes in the area at every level of Faculty in Focus: the curriculum. In addition to teaching “Islamic Tradition,” which had been taught in the depart- Adam Gaiser ment by Professor John Kelsay for almost twenty years, he has developed courses in “Islam in the Modern World,” “Islam in North America,” “Muhammad and the Qur’an,” “Shiite Islam,” and “Islamic Mysticism.” A native of Fairfax, Virginia, Gaiser was a Comparative Religion major at the College of William and Mary. He also continued his study of Russian, which he began in high school, with a semester abroad in St. Petersburg. During that semester, on a trip to Samarkand and Bukhara (Uzbekestan), he decided to focus on the study of Islam. Returning to William and Mary, he began the study of Arabic and the Middle East. Between college and graduate school, Gaiser im- proved his command of Arabic and knowledge of the Middle East while volunteering at a school in Jerusalem. In his PhD program at the University of Virginia, where he focused on Islamic Studies within the area of History of Religions, Gaiser worked closely with Prof. Aziz Sachedina, one of the world’s foremost experts on Shiite Islam, who had also been a co-director of Professor Kelsay’s dissertation. He had the opportunity to continue Gaiser at the courtyard of the Alcázar of Seville, a royal palace in Seville, Spain. his study of Arabic for two summers in Jordan and to do dissertation research in Amman for a ditions, published by Oxford University Press in NEH’s summer institute on “Cultural Hybridi- year on a Fulbright-Hays dissertation fellowship. 2010, traces the elaboration of Ibadi conceptions ties: Christians, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Gaiser’s research focuses on the Ibadiyya, a of leadership in the early and medieval periods. Mediterranean.” While in Spain, he also had the non-Sunni and non-Shiite interpretation of Islam, Gaiser’s current research examines early Kharijite opportunity to travel to Cordoba, Granada, and whose contemporary adherents may be found to- and Ibadi martyrdom narratives. Seville, as well to the Basque Country, the family day in Oman and parts of North and East Africa. Recent travels have taken Gaiser to Oman, home of his wife, Professor Carolina Gonzalez of His new book, Muslims, Scholars, Soldiers: The a major center for the study of Ibadi Islam, and the FSU Department of Modern Languages.