Dear friends of Religious Studies at Mizzou,
Welcome to our digital newsletter! Once a semester, we will bring you the latest news and information from our department. We’d love to receive news and feedback from our students, alumni, and friends; please feel free to email me at
[email protected]
. And don’t forget to check out our
updated website
and follow us on
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,
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, and
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.
Signe Cohen
Chair
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Congratulations to the three students who are receiving their master’s degrees in religious studies this spring:
Rebecca Brietzke,
Alexander Skelton, and
America Wolff!
And congratulations to Wolff on being accepted into the doctoral program at Florida State University where she will do research on religion, politics, and media in the 20
th- and 21
st-century United States.
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Congratulations to religious studies master’s student
Zach Montgomery
, who was invited to give a lecture on sacred sexuality in Kansas City.
Montgomery specializes in new religious movements and Hindu tantra.
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Congratulations to religious studies major
Tessi Muskrat Rickabaugh
on receiving the very prestigious
Hesburgh Scholarship
, which is only awarded to four Mizzou students per year. She also led a workshop for the Spiritual Directors’ International Conference in Bellevue, Washington, in March.
Tessi Muskrat Rickabaugh, left, with her co-presenters Tiffany Muskrat and Tucker FitzGerald.
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Congratulations to undergraduate religious studies majors
Katherine
Stevenson and
Dellinger
Caspersen, who gave successful paper presentations at a graduate student conference at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte this spring! Their conference travel was sponsored by the
Jill Raitt Fund for Excellence and the generosity of our alumni.
Katherine Stevenson presenting a paper on a Durkheimian interpretation of Pope John Paul II’s
Theology of the Body.
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The department is also thrilled to congratulate religious studies major
Ernesto Aguirre
on being admitted to the
McNair Scholars Program
at Mizzou!
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Staff Appreciation Award to Tiffany Horton
Congratulations to the department's amazing admin,
Tiffany Horton, who won an A&S Staff Appreciation award! Well deserved, Tiffany!
Dean Patricia Okker and Tiffany Horton. Photo credit: Nicole Monnier.
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Retiree of the Year Award to Jill Raitt
Congratulations to Professor Emerita
Jill Raitt,
the department’s beloved founder, on winning a
Retiree of the Year Award
from Mizzou. Raitt stepped out of retirement to teach two courses for the department last fall and is currently completing a new monograph on the Jesuit direction of women.
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Book Award to Signe Cohen
Associate Professor
Signe Cohen’s edited volume
The Upaniṣads: A Complete Guide was one of the Choice Academic Title Award winners for 2018. You can
read a review of the book here.
Cohen also recently published an article on a completely different topic:
“The Two Alchemists in
Harry Potter:
Voldemort, Harry, and the Quests for Immortality” in the
Journal of Religion and Popular Culture. On another very different note, she presented a paper on Buddhist killer robots at the American Oriental Society meeting in Chicago in March and participated in a premodern poetry reading at the same conference, where she read from her translation of the 11
th-century Sanskrit text
Śṛṅgāramañjarīkathā, which also features robots. Cohen also presented a paper on time in the Upaniṣads at Princeton University in April.
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Paper As an Agent of Change
Associate Professor
Rabia Gregory
is working on a new project about periodization that examines how paper changed Christianity. She presented on part of this project,
The Illusion of Medieval Christianity,
at the Medieval Academy of America in March, and another part,
Christianity in the Age of Paper,
in the
Premodern Studies Seminar
at the Newberry Library in April.
Rabia Gregory examining a hand-colored 15
th
-century Apocalypse at the Newberry Library in Chicago.
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Undergraduate Research Program
Associate Professor
Nate Hofer is working with an undergraduate student through the A&S Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Mentorship Program.
Tory Hollingsworth will help with Hofer’s research for his new book project.
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The department had the great pleasure of hosting
George Archer, an assistant professor from Iowa State University, who spoke about orality, literacy, and the Qur’an.
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Our colleague, an assistant professor from Saint Louis University,
Rachel McBride Lindsey, gave a great lecture about lived religion in St. Louis. Check out her
#ArchCityReligion project here.
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Our
Religion and Public Life lecture this spring was a fascinating lecture by
Sylvester Johnson, professor and director for the Center for the Humanities at Virginia Tech.
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Department of Religious Studies | 221 Arts and Science Building
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