Doctoral students in Religions in the Americas must demonstrate knowledge of the primary languages of their major field, including indigenous languages, where appropriate, and the relevant languages of scholarship.  Students working in any area of the Americas are strongly encouraged to demonstrate proficiency in Spanish. Near-native proficiency in speaking, reading, and writing Spanish is expected of students of the religions of the Spanish borderlands and/or Latin America.

The language exam is offered three times per year by the School of International Letters and Cultures.  The Exam Application, with the selected book, must be submitted to the School of International Letters and Cultures approximately one month before the scheduled exam date. The application can be picked up in School of International Letters and Cultures (LL 440), or on-line at http://www.asu.edu/graduate/forms/index.html. This application must be signed by your Director of Graduate Studies or the Chair of your Supervisory Committee before it can be submitted for approval.

The text for the exam must be in the student's chosen foreign language, must be a minimum of 200 pages, must be a scholarly work, must not be fiction or poetry, and must be approved by both the student's advisor and the School of International Letters and Cultures. It is advisable for the test to relate to the applicant's field of study or research. You will be graded on your ability to translate a short text from the foreign language being tested into coherent English. Translations should include main ideas and important details of the passage.

The exam is graded on a pass/fail basis. A 'Pass' translated text would contain main ideas and important details of the foreign language text. Vocabulary and grammar would contain main ideas and important details of the foreign language text. The English translation should consist of grammatically correct sentences, which form a coherent text that could stand on its own as an understandable piece of prose.

The results of your test will be reported within four weeks of the examination.

Comprehensive Examinations
Overview of the Comprehensive Examinations

Phase II also includes Comprehensive Examinations in 1) method and theory in the academic study of religion 2) the student’s major area of study and 3) the student's minor area of study.  The exam consists of three written exams.  Within two weeks, the student meets with the examining committee for the oral exam.  At the conclusion of the oral part of the exam, the Supervisory Committee determines the grade. 

The Graduate College requires that each student take a comprehensive examination in his/her discipline after the course work in an approved program of study has been completed. The Department of Religious Studies interprets this to mean that the earliest time the comprehensive examination may be taken is following the completion of two full years of graduate study (with a minimum of 9 hours per semester exclusive of research credits). Within broad guidelines established by the Graduate College and the Department, the area specialties are free to develop comprehensive examinations along somewhat different lines, and the student will want to consult the examination policy for his/her specific area (Religion in the Americas, Islam, Religions of Asia). The comprehensive examination is designed to assess a student's level of academic preparation to pursue dissertation research. The comprehensive examination requires the student to demonstrate a thorough understanding of research and theoretical issues through written work and in an oral defense. The comprehensive examination should be completed before the dissertation prospectus is submitted.

After a student has filed the Program of Study, fulfilled the course requirements for the first two phases of the Ph.D. program, and passed the language exam(s), he or she, with the permission of the supervisory committee, may proceed with the written and oral comprehensive examinations. The results of these examinations are recorded on the Report of Doctoral Examinations and Approval of the Approval of the Prospectus form which is available at the Graduate College or on-line at http://www.asu.edu/graduate/forms/index.html.  These forms are to be obtained at least 3 weeks before the comprehensive examination and filed with the Chair of the Supervisory Committee.

Passing the Comprehensive Examinations
The Graduate College requires that the Department determine whether the student has passed or failed the total comprehensive examination. Examining committees have certain responsibilities beyond simply deciding whether the student has passed or failed comprehensive examinations. If, in the judgment of the committee, the student barely passed the exam, the committee may request additional work from the student, the nature of which will depend on the committee's judgment of the deficiencies in the student's performance. When the determination of "pass" or "fail" is made, the form filed with the Chair of the Supervisory Committee is completed, signed by the committee members and the department chair, and retained in the student's file in the Main Office. This form is used for the approval of the dissertation prospectus as well. At the time of the Prospectus defense, the student will retrieve the form from the Main Office; following the meeting, the form is forwarded to the Graduate College.

The comprehensive exam is designed to ensure the student's mastery of the field, including its broader issues, theories, and key findings. The comprehensive exam consists of two phases, written and oral.  The student will have five days to complete the written portion of the exam.  After the student has completed the written exam and the Supervisory Committee has reviewed it, the student will undergo a culminating oral exam.  For the oral exam, the student should be prepared to defend the written answers and to answer other questions posed by the Committee. 

Completion of the comprehensive exam requires several steps:

• Formal selection of a committee consisting of three tenure-track faculty, of which at least two must be members of the Religious Studies Department;
• Preparation of a reading list covering key sub-areas of the field and including major works defining those areas (the sub-areas must be approved by the student's mentor);
• Approval of the reading list by the faculty committee (the student should provide the list to all members and modify the reading list as suggested; no formal meeting is required);
• The written examination; and
• The oral examination.

Special Considerations for Americanists

• For the qualifying exam in theory, half the works on the reading list (about 20-30 books) will be those that the department as a whole agrees that all students must read. The remaining books and articles will be drawn from theoretical works that represent the student’s chosen disciplinary approach. This portion of the reading list will be created by the supervisory committee in consultation with the student.
• For the qualifying exam in Religions in the Americas, half the works on the reading list (20-30 books) will be those that the Americanists on the faculty agree that all students working in the Americas must read. This portion of the list will be created by the Americanist faculty and will be updated as needed. The remainder will comprise major scholarly works on North American Religions or Latin American Religions or Borderlands Religions, depending on the student's area focus. This portion of the list will be made up by the supervisory committee in consultation with the student. It should reflect not only what the student has studied in courses so far but also what he or she may have missed: here is the place to address gaps in course work rather than to be ruled by them.
• The third exam aims to qualify students in a particular specialization (e.g. Pentecostalism, missions, African-American religious history, Native American religions, Catholicism) within the broad rubric of religions in the Americas, with a view toward both the dissertation and the student's eventual competitiveness on the job market. This, then, is also a place to address gaps in preparation and not simply to test a student on the works that may already have a place on his or her prospective dissertation bibliography. The reading list of 40-60 key books/articles will be created by the supervisory committee in consultation with the student.

Dissertation Prospectus
The Supervisory Committee must approve the dissertation prospectus. Students should confer with their supervisors before preparing the prospectus for advice concerning its format; however, the following observations will apply in most instances:

• The preparation of the prospectus should begin with a clear statement of the major question addressed in the thesis.
• The prospectus should include a thorough literature review in the prospectus must be of sufficient scope as to make the statement of the problem fully comprehensible. The review of the literature should provide your reader with a clear and concise understanding of the current scholarly dialogue about your question.  You should also show your reader how your project contributes in an original way to this broader scholarly dialogue.  There are many ways to be original; you may ask new questions of well-known sources; you may introduce new sources into the literature; or you may use the methods of one field to examine anew the sources used primarily in another.
• Your prospectus should also outline the sources of your data and defend the selection of those sources.
• The prospectus should report all those details of the methods employed in the research project.  In the humanities, the methods often come down to the specific questions that the researcher addresses. 

The Graduate College requires a formal defense of the dissertation prospectus.  The appropriate form (maintained in the student's file) must be signed at the defense.

Completion of Phase II
Ph.D. students complete Phase II upon

1. completing 30 hours of course per the requirements listed above;    
2. passing the foreign language examination;
3. passing the comprehensive examinations; and
4. successfully defending the dissertation prospectus.

Phase III:
Candidacy
When a student has completed the comprehensive examination, successfully defended the prospectus, and has submitted the Report of Doctoral Comprehensive Examinations and Approval of the Ph.D. Dissertation Prospectus form to the Graduate College, he/she will be admitted to candidacy and enter the third phase of the Ph.D. program. The student will receive a letter from the Graduate College congratulating him/her on his/her achievement.  

During Phase III the student must complete 24 semester hours of research and dissertation and a successful oral defense of the dissertation.  The student’s Supervisory Committee will direct the research and writing of the dissertation.

Following the semester in which they are admitted to candidacy, students must enroll for a minimum of 12 hours of either 792 research credit, 799 dissertation credit, or a combination of both in subsequent semesters.

Final Oral Defense Examination
After the Supervisory Committee has approved final copies of the dissertation, and after Format Approval has been obtained from the Graduate College, the final oral examination will be scheduled by the Graduate College. This defense must be held by the deadline as stated in the Graduate Catalog, but no sooner than 10 working days after format approval. In rare instances, if necessary, a petition for exception from the 10-day period can be made through the committee chair to the Graduate College.

For further information on the Ph.D. program, please see the "Ph.D. Student Guide".

THE FACULTY

MIGUEL ASTOR AGUILERA
(Ph.D., University of Albany-SUNY, 2004/ Department of Anthropology) is an Assistant Professor who specializes in Mesoamerican religion, particularly Mayan ethnography, iconography and archeology; pre-Columbian ethnohistory; colonial and contemporary Mayan religion in the Yucatán peninsula.

STEPHEN R. BOKENKAMP
(Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1986 /Department of East Asian Languages) is a Professor, also 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.

LINELL E. CADY
(Th.D., Harvard, 1981/Department of Theology) is the Franca G. Oreffice Dean’s Distinguished Professor of modern western religious thought, Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, and has special interests in religion and American culture; religion and the public/private boundary; and method and theory in the study of religion.

JOHN CARLSON
(Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2005/Divinity School) is an Assistant Professor specializing in Christianity and the political order, just war tradition, human rights and ethics.

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.

CHRISTOPHER DUNCAN
(Ph.D., Yale University, 1998/Department of Anthropology) is an Assistant Professor, also in the School for Global Studies, specializing in communal violence (particularly religious violence) and forced migration in eastern Indonesia, in particular on the island of Halmahera.

AURELIO ESPINOSA
(Ph.D., University of Arizona, 2003/Department of History) is an Assistant Professor specializing in the political and religious history of Habsburg Spain (1504-1700).

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

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

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

ABDULLAHI GALLAB
(Ph.D., Brigham Young University, 1997/Department of Sociology) is a Lecturer, also in African and African American Studies, with special interests in Islam and media and politics in Africa.

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

ALEXANDER HENN
(Ph.D., University of Mainz / Germany, 1988) is an Associate Professor, also 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.

AGNES KEFELI
(Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2001/Department of History) is a Lecturer specializing in Islam, Central Asia, and religion in Russia and in the Ottoman Empire.

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.

KENNETH M. MORRISON
(Ph.D., University of Maine, 1975/Department of History) is a Professor of Native American religions with particular interest in ethnohistory of missions and the interpretation of the symbolic, mythic, and ritual principles of religions.

PORI PARK
(Ph.D., UCLA, 1998/ Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures) is an Assistant Professor of religion in Korea who specializes in Buddhism, Ch'an Buddhism and the interaction among Buddhism, modernity, and nationalism.

DANIEL RAMIREZ
(Ph.D., Duke University, 2005/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.

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.

JULIANE SCHOBER
(Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1989/Department of Anthropology) is an Associate Professor of religions in Southeast Asia, specializing in Theravada Buddhist traditions; modernity, culture and politics; Buddhist icons; Buddhism in America, and the interpretation of religious practice in social and historical contexts.

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.

SHAHLA 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, specializing in the histories of gender, race, and cultural encounter in nineteenth and twentieth century American religion. 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.

RICHARD E. WENTZ
(Ph.D., George Washington University, 1971/Department of History) is a Professor Emeritus of religion in America, specializing in American folk religion, American civil religion, nineteenth century American religious thought, and American spirituality.

MARK R. WOODWARD
(Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1985/Department of Anthropology) is an Associate Professor of religions of Southeast Asia, with special interest in Islam and modernization.

AFFILIATED FACULTY

HYAEWEOL CHOI
 (Ph.D., 1993, SUNY-Buffalo) is an associate professor of Korean Studies in the School of International Letters and Cultures with research interests in transcultural and religious encounters, missionary discourse, intellectual history of Korea, gender and modernity in East Asia, and Asian diaspora.

JEFFRIE MURPHY
(Ph.D., University of Rochester, 1966/School of Law) is a Regents’ Professor of Law and Philosophy specializing in philosophy of law/jurisprudence, criminal law, moral philosophy (including moral psychology), philosophy in literature, law and literature, and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

DAVID JACOBSON
(Ph.D., Princeton University, 1991) is Director of the School for Global Studies and Professor of Sociology and specializes in research and teaching of politics from a global and legal perspective, with a particular focus on international and regional institutions, international law and human rights issues.

HAVA SAMUELSON
(Ph.D., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 1978/Department of Jewish Thought) is a Professor of History specializing in Jewish Studies and European intellectual history.

GEORGE THOMAS
(Ph.D., Stanford University, 1979/Department of Sociology) is a Professor of Sociology. He is especially interested in the worldwide pattern of the simultaneous emergence of public, political religious nationalisms, private, personal spiritualities and sociology of religion.

HOYT TILLMAN
(Ph.D., Harvard University, 1976/History and East Asian Languages) is a Professor of History specializing in Chinese Thought and Traditions.

ROSALYNN VOADEN
(PhD. University of York, 1995/English) is an Associate Professor of English, specializing in medieval mysticism, particularly women visionaries; hagiography; women in the Middle Ages; gender in Medieval literature; visionary literature.

 

CONTACT INFORMATION
For information and application materials please contact:

Marsha Schweitzer, Graduate Coordinator
Department of Religious Studies
Mail Code 3104
Arizona State University, Tempe AZ 85287-3104
PHONE: (480) 965-0453
FAX: (480) 965-5139
EMAIL: gradrs@asu.edu