Cutsinger's recent publications include new editions of several works of Frithjof Schuon. Gnosis: Divine Wisdom and Sufism: Veil and Quintessence were published in 2006, and Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts appeared in early 2007; the next volume in this series, Christianity/Islam: Perspectives on Esoteric Ecumenism, is completed but not yet in print. Recent articles and lectures include "The Noble Lie", published in Sacred Web: A Journal of Tradition and Modernity (Vol. 19), and "The Sound of a Lecture Undelivered: Jesus and the World's Religions", the 2007 Kendrick-Poerschke Lecture at Furman University; print and audio for both are available on his website. Cutsinger also recently co-authored an article with his colleague Waleed El-Ansary on "A Perennialist Perspective on Religion and Conflict" for the journal European View, and he is currently writing the program notes for the December 2007 Zurich premiere of a new orchestral setting of the Mass of the Immaculate Conception by Sir John Tavener; Cutsinger will be participating with Tavener in a number of panel discussions on perennial philosophy, religion, beauty, and the divine feminine.
On the teaching front, Professor Cutsinger's recent great books seminars in the University's Honors College have focused on sin and suffering (Oresteia, Inferno, Hamlet, and Brothers Karamazov), the nature of virtue (Meno, Consolation of Philosophy, Metaphysics of Morals, and Twilight of the Idols/Antichrist), and religion and fantasy (Tolkien's Silmarillion, C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, and Charles Williams's Place of the Lion). Always works in progress, the most recent versions of his lectures for two of his other courses, Introduction to Religious Studies and Christian Theology, are now available on his website (see "Paths of Return" and "That Man Might Become God" on the respective pages). During this coming spring semester (2008) Cutsinger will team-teach a graduate seminar on the perennial philosophy with Dr El-Ansary, with readings drawn from the writings of Schuon, Guénon, Coomaraswamy, Burckhardt, Lings, Pallis, Sherrard, and others.
For detailed information concerning Professor Cutsinger's work, including PDF copies of many of his articles, please consult his personal website, www.cutsinger.net
We welcome a new colleague to Religious Studies. Waleed El-Ansary comes to us from George Washington University, where he received his Ph.D in Human Sciences with concentration in Islamic Studies. He is a consultant to the Royal Court of Jordan as well as the Grand Mufti of Egypt and is involved in interfaith dialog. His research focuses on the relationship between religion, philosophy, science, and economics.
Carl Evans recently organized and moderated two interfaith panel discussions: "Faith-Sensitive Care Giving" for the volunteer care givers at Palmetto Baptist Hospital; and "Challenges My Faith Faces in Today's World" for the annual meeting of the South Carolina Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Panelists for the two events included representatives of Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Native American religious traditions.
Evans's co-edited volume, Scripture in Context: Essays on the Comparative Method (Pickwick Theological Monograph Series 34: Pickwick Press, 1980) has recently been reprinted by Wipf and Stock Publishers (August 2004).
Evans continues to work on a book titled Encountering the Other: A Social History on Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in Ancient Judah. The study charts the changing demographics in Judah during the late monarchic, exilic, and post-exilic periods and examines how various groups responded to the challenges of ethnic and religious diversity. He has been invited to contribute an article on "The Diaspora Idea in Biblical Writings" for the Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora. He is also preparing a volume of personal reflections on coping with illness, death, and grief called The Shadow of Death: A Memoir.
He was recently elected vice chair of the South Carolina Commission on the Holocaust and to the boards of the Ecumenical Institute of the Southeast and the South Carolina Christian Action Council.
Hal's book, Zen and the Art of Anything, was published in November of 1999 by Summerhouse Press and was selected as one of the “Fifty Best Spiritual Books of 2001” by the Journal of Spirituality and Health.
The book, illustrated by Marianne Rankin, attempts to make Zen more accessible to the popular reader, and applicable to everyday activities. It may be ordered for $10 (includes shipping and handling) by contacting Hal directly at frenchh@sc.edu A smaller paperback edition, published in June, 2001, by Broadway Books, is available in bookstores for $11.00.
Hal has been involved in several service projects. The most recent ones were two with students: in the Dominican Republic in Spring Break of 2004 and in Katrina Relief in Biloxi, Ms. just before Christmas in 2005. In June of 2005 he brought over $3000 from Partners in Dialogue to assist with tsunami relief in India, and worked there for a week in building an orphanage. In the summer of 2007 he participated in a service learning project in Appalachia.
In 2003, 2004, and 2006 he taught a five day workshop, "Learning Non-Violence from Gandhi and Friends," at Ammerdown Retreat Centre in England, and will teach two other workshops there in 2007. He received a grant from the Honors College to teach a course in Spring, 2006, "The Cultural Legacy of Greece and Turkey," and in the 2006 Maymester he led 30 Honors students to experience that legacy on site in Greece and Turkey. In 2008 he will lead a Capstone Maymester course in Greece through the University Study Abroad office.
French continues to be involved in interfaith activity. He gave three lectures, on Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and Gandhi, at a 75th anniversary conference of the World Congress of Faiths in London in 2006. In June of 2007 he presented a paper, "A Just Peace Theory Applied to Iraq," at a conference, "Iraq for All Iraqis," at the United Nations, sponsored by the World Conference on Religions for Peace, and in July of 2007 he led a workshop, "Freedom from Tyranny and Terrorism," at the annual meeting of the North American Interfaith Network in Richmond. He has just completed eight years of chairing the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Lectureship Committee, which has brought a number of outstanding Roman Catholic leaders to the University of South Carolina.
In July of 2008 he taught a workshop, "Zen and the Art of Anything," to fifty American college students in a program on Humanistic Buddhism at a Buddhist center, Fo Guang Shan, in Taiwan.
Clifford Hospital, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion from Queen's University at Kingston, Canada, is currently teaching with the Department of Religious Studies. In addition to courses on Hinduism and Buddhism, he also teaches courses on cross cultural issues such as heroes and saints, and sacred spaces.
Hospital continues work on an ongoing project to develop a shared global theory of revelation which explores a theological basis for a pluralist religious position and which would be accessible to people of the different religious traditions. His model examines foundational revelatory events, established in the various historically specific religious communities through the creation of authoritative texts, which are then subjected to an ongoing interpretative process through time. The model allows for a range of responses to modernity, from conservative to progressive. The 9-11 event has added complicating factors, which he is now incorporating into his discussion. Although his work had taken into account the issues exemplified in that event, 9-11 has made it clear that the issues require a fuller treatment. In particular, the fact that often, on the basis of a naïve certainty of themselves as recipients of divine revelation, people perform horrific acts of dehumanization towards others, brings added urgency to the attempt to develop a more nuanced and open view of revelation.
Donald Jones continues to serve as the associate chair of the department, and Interim Graduate Director for the academic year of 2005-2006. He founded and oversees the annual Hall Lectureship which brought Luke Timothy Johnson, Robert Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, to USC in 1999 and Bart D. Ehrman, Bowman and Gordon Gray Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 2000. 2003 saw Dr.Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History Yale University and in 2004, the Visiting Lecturer was Dr. John Dominic Crossan, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at DePaul University, Chicago. In 2005 Don Jones was able to bring in Pheme Perkins, Professor of New Testament at Boston College. The lectures are a successful part of the Department's service to the University and local communities.
Dr. Jones presented a paper, "The Imperial Cult in Roman Smyrna," at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in 1999, he spoke to the Columbia Kiwanis Club on "The Golden Rule: One of the Mottoes of Kiwanis International." and preached at Trenholm Road United Methodist Church in their Lenten Series on "The True Family of Jesus." Additionally, he continues to work and speak on the Gospel of Thomas as it relates to current issues of research and parallels with the canonical Gospels.
Lewis published "Night and Spiritual Autobiography," in Approaches to Teaching Elie Wiesel’s Night, ed. Alan Rosen (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2007) and "Rojack Revisited as Nightmare Avatar of 'I, John, your brother’ (Rev. 1:9)," in American Dreams: Comparative Dialogues in U.S. Studies, ed. Ricardo Miquez (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007).
He published a letter to the editor of the New York Times Book Review on Howard Zinn’s populist interpretation of American history on July 1, 2007, and a short article, "On Teaching ‘'Religion in the South'," in the Newsletter of the Center on Religion in the South (Spring 2008).
His paper, "Religion in the Middle East: Implicit and/or Invisible," presented at the Denton Conference (sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Implicit Religion and Contemporary Spirituality), in Ilkley, Yorkshire, May 2006, will appear shortly in Implicit Religion: Journal of the CSIRCS, Vol 10:1). Another paper, “Reeling and Staggering: The Ecstatic Moment in the Poetry of James Dickey,” presented at the conference, “James Dickey: A celebration of the Life and Works, USC, January 2007, will appear in 2009 in the conference volume, The Way We Read James Dickey: Critical Approaches for the Twenty-first Century (University of South Carolina Press). A draft of the essay is up on the internet site, "Religion and Literature Online" under "Academic Papers Forum" (http://seanache.blogspot.com).
Lewis attended a conference, “Religion and Secularism,” sponsored by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) at Cambridge University, June 17-18, 2008.
He will present his daughter Helen Hill’s experimental film “Mouseholes” in a film session scheduled at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Chicago, November 1, 2009. (Film-maker, teacher, and activist, thirty-six-year-old Hill was murdered by an intruder in her home in the Marigny, New Orleans, in January 2007.)
Steve Lynn joined the Department of Religious Studies as chair, in July 2007. Steve brings with him a long-standing relationship with the department and its activities as well as a close friendship with a number of the faculty. He comes with six years experience as chair of the English Department and his current dual role as Senior Associate Dean for Liberal Arts.
His current project is The Cambridge Introduction to Rhetoric and Composition, with Christy Friend, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press
In fall of 2006, Stephanie Mitchem offered a Proseminar in Religion & Healing which dealt with ways in which healing provides a thematic way to 
apprehend anthropological concepts around body, identity, gender, culture, illness, health, and ritual. She also made a trip to Brazil during the summer of the same year to work on her research interests in the area of Women, Religion and Justice. You can see her photo-journal of the trip. She published African American Women Tapping Power and Spiritual Wellness (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press) in 2004, and has a new book forthcoming this year from New York University Press in 2006: African American Folk Healing (PRECIS).
In April, 2004, Cheryl Rhodes delivered a paper entitled "The Use and Abuse of Asethetics in Contemporary Fiction and Film" to the College English Teachers Association at their annual conference in Richmond, Va., and presented the same paper at the 38th annual meeting of the South Carolina Academy of Religion on Feb. 26th at Claflin University.
Cheryl teaches a number of courses on religious themes in literature and film. She also commutes once a week to Coastal Carolina University, where she teaches three classes of World Religions, using a filmatic approach, as well as teaching a class on The Bible in Contemporary Fiction and Film. She is interested in courses with an interdisciplinary approach, involving professors from the Art, History, and English Departments.
K.L.Seshagiri Rao is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Religious
Studies, University of Virgina, and Chief Editor of the Encyclopedia
of Hindusim project. The Encyclopedia is an ongoing research project of the Department of Religious Studies, funded by the India Heritage Research Foundation. Dr.Rao is also one of the founding editors and regular writers for "Interreligious Insight", published by the World Congress of Faiths, London, a journal formerly published under the name "World Faiths Encounter", and has been on the editorial boards of both "Dialogue and Alliance" and of "Ghandi Marg" journals for many years.
Dr. Rao received the prestigious Vishwa Hindu, title in 2006, conferred
by Avadhoota Dattapeetham, Mysore. The World Association of Vedic
Studies gave him the Honorary Award of Prachya Vidya Parangat at their
2006 conference in Houston, Texas. He also received a Certificate of Honor
awarded by Indological Research Association, Bangalore, in 2005.
He is a national member of the Thanksgiving Foundation, USA. Dr. Rao was a special invitee of the Government of India and UNESCO to the International Conference in Delhi (July 2003) on "Dialogue among Civilizations:Quest for new Perspectives". Also in 2003, he presented a paper at the International Conference on "Pluralism", held in Birmingham, England, and in April, was interviewed for the Television show, The Osgood File on the topic of Christian Yoga. In 2004 he was invited to participate in the World Parliament of Religions in Barcelona, Spain. His areas of interest and expertise are: Indic Religions, Gandhian Studies, and Interreligous Dialogue.
