Religious Studies: Faculty

MIGUEL ASTOR AGUILERA (Ph.D., University of Albany-SUNY, 2004 / Department of Anthropology) is an Assistant Professor whose research involves ethnography, iconography, and archaeology. He specializes in Mesoamerican cosmologies and their historical traditions, that is, pre-Columbian, colonial, and contemporary. His work is focused on Maya religious specialists in the Yucatán peninsula. More >

STEPHEN R. BOKENKAMP (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 1986 /
Department of East Asian Languages) is a Professor, joint appointment in the School for International Letters and Cultures, specializing in the study of Chinese Daoism, with a special emphasis on its literatures and its relations with Buddhism. (more coming)

LINELL E. CADY (Th.D., Harvard, 1981/Department of Theology) is a Professor of modern western religious thought with special interests in religion and American culture; religion and the public/private boundary; gender and religion; and method and theory in the study of religion. She is also Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict (http://www.asu.edu/csrc/)
at ASU. More >

JOHN CARLSON (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2005/Divinity School) is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, whose work draws together interests in religious ethics, Christian thought, and political philosophy. His primary research areas include Christianity and the political order, religion and conflict, just war thought, human rights, and issues of religion and public life. He is also Associate Director of ASU’s Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict. <More >

J. EUGENE CLAY (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1989/Department of History) is an Associate Professor specializing in Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Russian religious history. More >

CHRISTOPHER R. DUNCAN (Ph.D., Yale University, 1998/Department of Anthropology) is an Assistant Professor specializing in communal violence (particularly religious violence) and forced migration in eastern Indonesia, in particular on the island of Halmahera. He also conducts research on missionaries, the missionary encounter and conversion. More >

AURELIO ESPINOSA(Ph.D. University of Arizona, 2003/ Department of History) is an Assistant Professor affiliated with the Department of Religious Studies and the Hispanic Research Center who specializes in the political and religious history of Habsburg Spain (1504-1700) and the Spanish global empire. More >

ANNE FELDHAUS (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1976/ Department of Religious Studies) is Professor of religion in India, specializing in folk Hinduism, medieval Hinduism and religious geography. More >

TRACY FESSENDEN (Ph.D. University of Virginia, 1993/ Department of Religious Studies) is an Associate Professor of gender and religion, specializing in western religious traditions, religion and literature, and American religious and cultural history. More >

JAMES H. FOARD (Ph.D., Stanford, 1977/ Department of Religious Studies) is Professor of the history of religions, specializing in the religions of Japan, particularly popular religion and culture from medieval times to the present. More >

ABDULLAHI GALLAB (Ph.D., Brigham Young University, 1997/Department of Sociology) is a Assistant Professor in AAAS and RS specializing in Islam and the media and politics in Africa. More >

JOEL D. GEREBOFF (Ph.D., Brown, 1977/Department of Religious Studies) is Associate Professor of Judaism with special interests in Rabbinic Judaism and religion and ethics. He is Department
Chair. More >

ALEXANDER HENN (Ph.D., University of Mainz / Germany, 1988) is an Associate Professor, joint apppointment in the School for Global Studies, with special interests in processes of cultural and religious encounter and the history and ethnography of colonial conquest in India. More >

AGNES KEFELI-CLAY (Ph.D., ASU, 2001/Department of History) is a Lecturer specializing in Central Asia, Religion in Russia and in the Ottoman Empire. More >

MOSES N. MOORE (Ph.D., Union Theological Seminary, 1987/Department of Church History) is an Associate Professor of American and African-American religions, specializing in the interaction of race, religion and culture. More >

KENNETH M. MORRISON (Ph.D., University of Maine, 1975/Department of History) is Professor of Native American Religions with particular interest in ethnohistory of missions and the interpretation of the symbolic, mythic, and ritual principles of religions. In 2001 he was named an ASU Parents' Association Professor. More >

PORI PARK (Ph.D., UCLA, 1998/ Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures) is an Assistant Professor of Religion in Korea. Her research interests include Buddhism, Sŏn Buddhism, Korean Religions, and the interaction between Buddhism, modernity, and
nationalism. More >

DANIEL RAMIREZ (PhD Duke University/Department of Religion) is an Assistant Professor in religions of the Southwest borderlands, with a special interest in the history of religious contact, conflict, and conversion in the Americas, and in the transnational and cultural dimensions of religious practice. More >

NORBERT SAMUELSON (Ph.D. Indiana University, 1970/Department of Philosophy) is the Grossman chair of Jewish Studies with special interests in Jewish philosophy, philosophy of religion, and religion and science. More >

JULIANE S. SCHOBER (Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1989/Department of Anthropology) is an Associate Professor of religions in Southeast Asia, specializing in Theravada Buddhist
traditions. More >

TOD D. SWANSON (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1988/Divinity School) is an Associate Professor of Christian Studies and religion in Latin American with special interest in native traditions of the Americas. More >

SHALA TALEBI (Ph.D., Columbia University, 2007/Department of Anthropology) is an Assistant Professor specializing in issues of religion and state, and the performative role of language and metaphor as it relates to discourses of self-sacrifice and martyrdom within Islam and Iran.

TISA J. WENGER (Ph.D., Princeton University, 2002/ Department of Religion) is an Assistant Professor who specializes in the histories of gender, race, and cultural encounter in nineteenth and twentieth century American religion. Her current research addresses religious freedom and the historical construction of Native American religion, and she is beginning work on the history of Christian home missions in America. More >

RICHARD E. WENTZ (Ph.D., George Washington University, 1977/Department of History) is Professor Emeritus of religion in America, specializing in American folk religion, American civil religion, nineteenth century American religious thought, and American spirituality. More >

MARK WOODWARD (Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1985/Department of Anthropology) is an Associate Professor of religions of Southeast Asia with special interest in religion, modernity, colonialism, politics, violence, and collective identity. More >