What John Keats calls a “mellow fruitfulness” comes with maturity. But a tougher rind comes too. The Graduate Studies program as it ripens and reshapes will offer more to its degree candidates and demand more also. For instance, the newly “altered degree requirements place a greater stress on language training and other foundational skills required for original research and allow advisors to better tailor introductory materials to the needs of their incoming advisees” says Anne Blackburn.

Blackburn has been chiefly responsible for the revisions of the M.A. curriculum which were approved this December 2000. Other changes in the works include an increased “interdisciplinarity of advanced study within the department” alongside improved “resources and supervision available to graduate students.”

The innovative Faculty Associates program devised by Blackburn will be crucial in providing these new opportunities. Faculty for the program are selected by invitation from a variety of departmental fields at USC and at other local academies. These professors will welcome Religious Studies graduate students into their classrooms, provide occasion for specialized independent studies, and assist with theses and comprehensive examinations.

This is what the department will offer. What it will demand are students of serious intent who aim to use the program to prepare for advanced study in religious studies and related disciplines. Blackburn notes encouragingly that “the department receives an increasing number of applications from such students and aims to develop its reputation as a transitional program in several sub-fields of religious studies.”