On Friday, May 11, 2012, ten students in the Graduate Division of Religion (GDR) at Drew University joined faculty from Drew Theological School, family members, and friends in Craig Chapel for a doctoral hooding ceremony that conferred on them the university’s highest degree: the Ph.D. Entering to musical accompaniment provided by Assistant Professor of Church Music Mark A. Miller, they sat down as students. But as their names were called by their doctoral advisers, they rose as colleagues….Read featured article by Eric Johnson-DeBaufre.
Continuing a tradition of excellence, GDR students received a number of awards and distinctions this year. On April 24, 2012, GDR student Yong-Sup Song presented the results of his dissertation research in his lecture as the recipient of the Edward L. Long Peacemaking Fellowship for 2012. Song’s lecture, “Violence, Sin, and Narcissism in the Los Angeles Uprisings of 1992: African American and Korean American Conflict or White Racism?,” drew on a dissertation that Dr. Traci West described as offering a powerful “ethical analysis of the role of police violence and the mainstream mass media” in the Los Angeles riots…Read featured article.
Each year, the Tipple-Vosburgh Lectures feature distinguished scholars and theologians who energize the shared community of the Drew Theological School and the Graduate Division of Religion (GDR). This year’s lecture series, entitled “The Global Bible: Why People and Place Matter,” highlighted the tensive connection between two phenomenon in our present historical moment: global/universal and local/particular….Read featured article by Dong Sung Kim, PhD student in Hebrew Bible.
What to do with a PhD in Religion and Society from Drew? At first I did the conventional thing and lectured in religious studies at the University of Stirling, Scotland. Then, I returned to local Church ministry in the United Methodist Church where I found I had to submerge most of what I had learned in order to prevent my sermons from becoming too unwieldy. (I discovered quickly that parishoners have limited tolerance for “on the one hand/on the other hand” kind of ponderings…) That season of ice berg academic teaching might have gone on forever, except that my beloved husband got a back ache, soon diagnosed as stage four cancer, which culminated in his early death…Read featured article by Mary Maaga.
The topic of TTC XI, which ran from September 29 through October 2, was “Divinanimality: Creaturely Theology.” The neologism of the main title was borrowed from Jacques Derrida, whose philosophical work on animality, together with that of other prominent theorists, notably Donna Haraway, has catalyzed the emergence of a transdisciplinary endeavor variously termed “animal studies,” “animality studies,” or “posthuman animality studies.” TTC XI was conceived as an attempt to triangulate these novel reflections on humanity and animality with reflections on divinity…Read featured article by Stephen D. Moore, Professor of New Testament.
Each year incoming students to Drew University’s Graduate Division of Religion (GDR) conclude orientation week with a walking tour of New York City. Now in its third year, this tour is an annual reminder that scholars attend not only to scholarly methodology—but to simple, human truth...Read featured article by Wade Mitchell, PhD student in Theological and Philosophical Studies.
Queer scholarship and queer theory are becoming burgeoning sites of academic creativity, and Drew University’s Graduate Division of Religion (GDR) is at the forefront of this work. Following in the footsteps of last years’ participants, Peter Mena and Sara Rosenau, this year Drew students Jake Erickson and Natalie Williams were awarded the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Summer Institute Fellowship for scholars of religion working on LGTBQ issues of queer hermeneutics, writing, advocacy, varieties of justice, and religious pluralism…Read featured article.
In early August, the two of us along with Dr. Virginia Burrus traveled to Oxford University, where we joined other scholars in conversation about late ancient Christianity. Since its inception in 1951, the International Patristics Conference, which meets every four years, has provided opportunities for scholars to present their work to a critical, but sympathetic audience…Read featured article by Jennifer Barry and Peter Anthony Mena, PhD students in Historical Studies.
My first year of doctoral work ended in fairly typical fashion. A deluge of papers and readings made the last month of courses exciting, nail-biting, and very rewarding. As May gave way to June, I celebrated with friends and family of those graduating from Drew while beginning work as a research assistant for Professor Terry Todd. My research revealed the complex relationship between politics, gender, sexuality, and trans-national conservative evangelicalism in the late 1970s. This narrative added yet another storyline to an already multifaceted historiographic account of the Religious Right’s ascendancy in the United States. My summer had officially begun in a key of scholarship…Read featured article by L. Benjamin Rolsky, PhD student in Historical Studies.
In 1999, I received the MPhil in Theological and Religious Studies from Drew’s Graduate School. Since I was writing my dissertation on early American Methodism, I needed to travel to repositories in distant places. The Edwards-Mercer Prize enabled me to visit the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England. While searching for correspondence from English Methodist Jabez Bunting, I discovered original documents written by John Wesley, apparently torn from his journal…Read featured article by Daniel F. Flores, Drew University alumnus.
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