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Newsletter: Shorts
Departmental News in Brief
Carl Evans
At the Spring meeting of the General Faculty Carl Evans was awarded the USC Educational Foundation Award for Service. He was the keynote speaker, on "Who are our New Neighbors? Religious Diversity in South Carolina," for the annual LARCUM (Lutheran, Anglican, Roman Catholic, United Methodist) Bishops' Dialogue in November. He is a member of the leadership training team for a program on holistic health run by the USC Arnold School of Public Health and the SC Conference of the United Methodist Church and funded by a grant from the Duke Endowment. He continues to chair the Solomon-Tenenbaum Lectureship in Jewish Studies committee which brought James Carroll to USC in the fall of 2004.
Hal French
Emeritus professor Hal French published "A Non-Violence Self-Inventory" in a 2004 issue and "A Christian Insight on Forgiveness" in a 2005 issue of the journal Interreligious Insight. At the Ammerdown Retreat Centre in England he led a workshop on "Learning Non-Violence from Gandhi and Friends." At the World Association of Vedic Studies conference at the University of Maryland he offered a plenary lecture. In Naples, Florida, he gave five presentations to the group, Common Ground, and at Florida International University led a workshop on Christian Spirituality. He was the faculty sponsor for an Alternative Spring Break student group trip to the Dominican Republic to work in an orphanage.
| Don Jones discussing a text with MA candidate and course instructor, Brian Rivers.
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Donald Jones
Associate Chair of the Department, Donald Jones continues to organize the annual Hall Lectureship - on March 17 featuring Pheme Perkins, Professor of New Testament at Boston College. Jones presented a lecture, "Christianity and the Roman Imperial Cult," to high school students attending Classics Day at USC in October. His book on the gospel writer Luke, to be published by the USC Press, is in the works.
Jim Cutsinger
James Cutsinger continues editing a series of new anthologies compiled from the writings of the Swiss philosopher and comparativist Frithjof Schuon. Each volume begins with a short introduction by Cutsinger and features a thoroughly revised translation of the original French, editorial notes, a glossary of foreign terms and phrases, and a comprehensive index. Each of the first two volumes, The Fullness of God: Frithjof Schuon on Christianity (Spring 2004), and Prayer Fashions Man: Frithjof Schuon on the Spiritual Life (January 2005), also includes an appendix of previously unpublished materials, including selections from Schuon's letters, autobiographical and spiritual letters. A third collection is in the works, including chapters on the perennial philosophy, the relationship between religions, the human person, sacred art and symbolism.
Kevin Lewis
Kevin Lewis published "Understanding Terrorism" in the journal, Christian Networks (Fall 2003), short articles on Henry David Thoreau, Simone Weil, and Walt Whitman in the new 4th edition of Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwort (Mohr-Siebeck), and a review of the 2002 documentary film about Israeli and Palestinian children, "Promises," in the newsletter of NAIN (North American Interfaith Network). He has contributed an essay to the forthcoming volume, Teaching Wiesel's Night, in the ongoing MLA series on pedagogy. This year he has chaired the article prize committee for the Nineteenth Century Studies Association. In April he moderated a "town hall meeting" on church, state, and same-sex marriage in the USC Law School auditorium. In September he read his ballad, "Mango Jam," at the Poetry Initiative Summit event at the Columbia Museum of Art and his poem, "Those Were Not Troubles," commissioned for the luncheon program celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Women's Studies at USC.
Jon Michael Spencer
Yahya Jongintaba (Jon Michael Spencer) will leave the University at the end of this academic year to start his International Uhuru School in Tanzania and to establish a library based on books collected during his extensive international travel during the last dozen years. He invites visitors to his website: www.uhuruschool.com.
Jan Love
Jan Love is on leave this year in a new appointment as Deputy General Secretary for the Women's Division of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, a million member organization with a budget of $20 million and a staff of thirty, headquartered in New York City.
| David Vishanoff (left) and Tom Ellis (right) joined the Department as visiting assistant professors in 2004.
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David Vishanoff
The Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University awarded David Vishanoff "distinction" for his completed dissertation, "Early Islamic Hermeneutics: Language, Speech, and Meaning in Preclassical Legal Theory." He presented its three major chapters at meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the American Oriental Society during 2002 and 2004. In summer 2003 at the workshop, "Hermeneutics of Border: Canon and Community in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam," at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin he presented results of this work. His article on the early Muslim theologian al-Nazzam has just appeared in the second edition of The Encyclopedia of Religion. In November he addressed the USC Presbyterian Student Association on, "Querying Islam: An Introduction to Variables in Islamic Thought and Practice."
Tom Ellis
Tom Ellis presented a paper, "I Love You, I Hate You: Hindu Devotion and the Vicissitudes of Object Representations," at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religions in October, and an invited lecture, "If You're Brahman, Then I'm Not Krishna," on a similar theme at Appalachian State University in January. In March he will present a paper, "Of 'And' and 'Of': The Politics of Grammar and the Study of Religion," at the southeast regional meeting of the American Academy of Religion, and in April a paper, "Do You Feel Lucky? Well, Do Ya, Punk?: Postmodernism as Sacrificial Crisis and the Violent Redistribution of Chance," at the "Communities in Crisis" conference at USC organized by the Department of English Language and Literature.
Cliff Hospital
Adjunct professor Cliff Hospital teaches the introductory methods course for graduate students, RELG 700, as well as graduate and undergraduate courses on Hinduism and Buddhism.
Public Lecture
On November 15, Geshe Dakpa Topgyal, a Tibetan monk residing in Charleston, SC, gave a public lecture on the Columbia campus, on the concept of emptiness in Buddhist thought .
back to Newsletter 2005 table of contents page
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