Princeton's Center for the Study of Religion has named eight fellows for the 2001-2002 year. The fellows' work spans a wide range of topics related to religious life, including women in the church, religion and social activism, and Tibetan Buddhist death practices.
At Princeton, the fellows will co-teach seminars in conjunction with the center's thematic projects, mentor graduate and undergraduate students and participate in the center's weekly interdisciplinary seminar.
The fellows are:
Anthea D. Butler received a Ph.D. in American religious history from Vanderbilt University and is assistant professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. At Princeton, she will revise her dissertation, "A Peculiar Synergy: Matriarchy and the Church of God in Christ," which chronicles the inception of the women's department of the Church of God in Christ, the largest African-American Pentecostal denomination, and focuses on the role of the church mother.
Rosemary Polanin Carbine, who has a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Chicago, comes to Princeton to revise her dissertation, "Becoming Persons of Accountability: A Feminist Theological Anthropology for Theological Education." Her project analyzes the ways in which contemporary programs in ministerial training educate church leaders to engage in public theology.
Deidre Helen Crumbley received a Ph.D. in anthropology from Northwestern University and also holds a masters degree in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School. She is assistant professor of Africana studies at North Carolina State University and has completed a book manuscript entitled "Spirit and Structure: Institution-Building and Gender Practices in Three African Churches." At Princeton, she will research the African Diaspora and work on an historical ethnography of the intersection of race, gender, and religious innovation in the rise of an inner-city, African-American female-founded storefront church.
Bryan J. Cuevas received a Ph.D. in religion from the University of Virginia and is now assistant professor of religion at Florida State University. His research concerns Tibetan Buddhist death practices, and he will work on his project, "Rituals, Revenants, and the Walking Dead: Death and Afterlife in Premodern Tibet." His manuscript, which is under review for publication, is entitled, "The Treasures of Gampodar Mountain: A History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead ."
Yehuda Galinsky, who has a Ph.D. in Talmud and Rabbinic literature from Bar-Ilan University in Israel, wrote his dissertation on "The Four Turim and the Halakhic Literature of Fourteenth-Century Spain: Historical, Literary, and Halakhic Aspects." At Princeton, he will research Jewish practices of charity in fourteenth-century Christian Spain.
Paul Lichterman has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley and is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The author of The Search for Political Community: American Activists Reinventing Commitment (Cambridge University Press, 1996), he will work at Princeton on a project exploring Christianity and civic renewal in America.
Sharon Erickson Nepstad received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Colorado and is assistant professor in the sociology department and the Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Specializing in the study of social movements, religion, and conflict resolution and peace studies, she will work on her project "Swords into Plowshares: The Theology and Practice of the Catholic Left" while at Princeton.
Philip Ziegler holds a Th.D. degree in systematic theology from Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto. His dissertation is entitled "The Concreteness of Christian Theology in a Time of Gottesvergessenheit: An Analytical Study of the Theological Programme of Wolf Krvtke." He comes to Princeton to work on a project about the public theologian Paul L. Lehman, with an eye toward advancing discussions concerning the character and direction of public theology in the United States.
Contact: Marilyn Marks (609) 258-3601
