Academic Year 2009-2010

Through a generous pilot grant from Rita and Melvin Wallerstein, the Drew University Center on Religion, Culture & Conflict (CRCC) is pleased to issue its third Call for Proposals for faculty development grants to support current research, symposia, conferences and public programming that relate in some way to the Center’s work.

All tenured, tenure-track, Library and fulltime faculty from all three schools within the University are eligible for consideration, either as individual applicants or as members of a team. Long-term non-tenure-track faculty are also eligible for consideration if their projects involve partnership with tenured or tenure-track faculty.  Grant size will range between $1,000 and $10,000.  Grants may be used to support conferences, performances, or exhibitions, honoraria for external visitors, project-related travel expenses, course release time to facilitate research or team-teaching, stipends for student research assistants, supplies and resources, and other expenses.  Successful applicants will be expected to submit a final report suitable for publication on the Center’s website, and may be called on to participate in Center programming related to their projects.

Drew University’s CRCC seeks to encourage the widest possible interdisciplinary investigation and study of the complex nexus of religion and other aspects of culture, especially, but not exclusively at moments of tension and conflict.  While the relationship of religion to society is the primary emphasis of the Center’s work, we define this interest broadly.

All grant proposals should include the following:

  1. A title and concise description of the project (not to exceed 500 words).
  2. A clear statement of the requested grant amount and explanation of how the grant, if awarded, would facilitate the project (not to exceed 250 words).
  3. If the grant involves more than one applicant, a brief description of the role of each applicant in the proposed project.
  4. A brief statement of how the project would contribute to the Center’s work (not to exceed 100 words).
  5. A preliminary budget of the entire project and a schedule for completion.
  6. A copy of the applicant’s current curriculum vitae.

Applications are due on March 25, 2009, and awards will be announced by April 15th.  Please submit all applications and supporting materials electronically to both the Center’s director, Dr. J. Terry Todd, and to the Center’s Associate Director, Dr. Jonathan Golden.

2008-09 Rita and Melvin Wallerstein Partnership Grants

Lisa S. Brenner (Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre Arts, CLA)
Project Title: Reaching Across Boundaries: The Galilee Multicultural Theatre

Dr. Brenner was awarded a grant to allow her to travel to Israel to pursue her study of the Galilee Multicultural Theatre, a cross-cultural and inter-religious theater company operating in Israel and the West Bank.  Her research focuses on the use of theater as a focal point for socio-political dialogue in a region of intense cross-cultural and inter-religious conflict.  This company has produced an important play entitled: Neighbors, the story of an Arab musician and a Jewish actor of Argentinian descent, who come together to explore both their differences and their common humanity.  This partnership grant will allow Dr. Brenner to travel to Israel and the West Bank to interview both members of the Galilee Multicultural Theatre and their audiences.

Catherine Keller (Professor, Drew Theological School)
Project Title: Religion, Culture and Science: The Contribution of Process Studies

Professor Keller is currently working on a new book employing her work in Process Theology to explore the intersection of modern science and religion.  Her grant proposal requested funds to support two related projects.  The first project is to sponsor a series of public lectures at Drew by internationally famous scholars who are exploring process theology from the context of different religious traditions.  The second project for which Professor Keller requested funding support from the Wallerstein Partnership Grant program is a documentary film about her mentor and the internationally famous process theologian John B. Cobb, Jr.  In her work Professor Keller examines the impossibility of theology when the “death of God” view predominates among intellectuals.

Christine Kinealy (Professor, Caspersen School of Graduate Studies)
Project Title: Beyond the Pale: Caricatures and Stereotypes of Irish and Jewish Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Jewish and Irish immigrants were the two largest immigrant groups in Britain during the nineteenth-century.  Professor Kinealy is working on a book exploring how these two distinct, yet analogous, groups were represented in nineteenth-century Britain.  Her work focuses especially on how each group was characterized and caricatured in the British media.  She is also attempting to understand how Protestantism served as a prism through which other faiths were measured.  Her grant proposal requested funds to support her research, including travel to archives in London, Manchester and Glasgow, as well as support for a one-day symposium at Drew.  The symposium will bring together scholars who are working in this field.

Neil Levi (Associate Professor, Department of English, CLA)
Project Title: Conversion and Crisis: Passages Between Judaism and Christianity

Dr. Levi is beginning a new project exploring the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in the work of two Jewish philosophers who were each dying of cancer.  The first philosopher, Jacob Taube, was working at the end of his life on a book subsequently published as: The Political Theology of Paul. The second scholar whose work Dr. Levi is working on is the English philosopher and sociologist Gillian Rose, author of Mourning Becomes the Law and Love’s Work. Taube came to believe that despite the anti-Semitic qualities of Catholic doctrine there was a certain “sincerity” that inspired hope in reconciliation.  Rose was deeply dedicated to Jewish philosophy and learning, and yet converted to Anglicanism on her deathbed.  Dr. Levi requested a grant to support his research into how catastrophe, in this case the reality of impending death through cancer, affected the reconciliatory work of these two Jewish philosophers.

Ann Saltzman (Professor, Department of Psychology, CLA)
Project Title: “God is My Witness:” The Role of Religion in Surviving Genocide

Professor Saltzman requested support for a public program commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of the Rawandan genocide of 1994.  The keynote speaker for this program will be the Rawandan author and genocide survivor, Immaculée Ilibagiza.  She survived the genocide by hiding in the bathroom of a local Hutu Protestant minister.  Imaculée Ilibagiza is the author of Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rawandan Holocaust.

Leslie Sprout (Assistant Professor, Department of Music, CLA)
Project Title: Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem and the Legacy of Vichy

Dr. Sprout applied for a Wallerstein Partnership Grant to support her on-going research on Maurice Duruflé and his Requiem, op. 9.  In her earlier work Dr. Sprout established that this still popular work was not produced following WWII, as had long been assumed, but was actually a work commissioned by the Vichy government in 1941.  As Dr. Sprout explains: “The Requiem, for chorus and symphony orchestra, is based on a specifically French performance tradition of Gregorian chant.  Yet the Requiem’s musical associations range from studious respect for the Roman Catholic liturgy to the sounds of military triumph.”  Dr. Sprout sees the Requiem as embodying a vision of French contemporary music that Vichy was working to promote: a repertoire that was respectful of national traditions in general, and of France’s Roman Catholic heritage in particular.  Through Duruflé’s work, Dr. Sprout will expand her examination of the relationship among composers, Roman Catholicism, and fascism in Europe during the Second World War.

Traci West (Professor, Drew Theological School)
Project Title: Religious Responses to Violence Against Women in the African Diaspora

Building on her earlier research on male-perpetrated intimate violence against African-American women, Dr. West requested support for her work to examine the constructive strategies that religious-based groups employ to address the problem of male-perpetrated sexual and physical assault of black women.  In addition, Dr. West plans to expand her research beyond the boundaries of the United States to examine violence against black women in Africa (specifically in Ghana and South Africa) and in South America (Brazil).