Religious Studies: Doctoral Program

Please click here for a Pdf file of the Religious Studies Doctoral Program Brochure.

Please click here for a printable file of the Graduate Student Guide (August, 2005) .

THE DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES
DOCTORAL PROGRAM

THE CAMPUS

Arizona State University is one of the premier metropolitan public research universities in the nation. Enrolling more than 57,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students on three campuses in metropolitan Phoenix, ASU maintains a tradition of academic excellence in core disciplines, and has become an important global center for innovative interdisciplinary teaching and research. ASU offers outstanding resources for study and research, including libraries and museums with important collections, studios and performing arts spaces for creative endeavor, and unsurpassed state-of-the-art scientific and technological laboratories and research facilities. The Department of Religious Studies is located on the main campus in Tempe.

ADMISSIONS AND FINANCIAL AID

Applicants must submit an official transcript, a statement of research interests, a writing sample, GRE scores, and three letters of recommendation to be considered for admission. Prospective applicants are encouraged to contact faculty in their area of interest before applying. Applications will be considered beginning on January 15 for admission the following fall semester. Financial assistance is available in the form of teaching and research assistantships, scholarships, and tuition wavers.

THE DEPARTMENT

The Department of Religious Studies investigates religion from a core perspective in the Humanities that also engages the social and behavioral sciences. The faculty, consisting of over 20 full-time professors, leads a PhD program that explores religious ideas and values, as expressed in texts, practices, and institutions throughout history and across the globe. Religious Studies professors have a special strength in teaching and research regarding Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Native American Traditions. Expertise in the transnational dimensions of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam is also a distinctive feature of the department.

DOCTORAL RESEARCH TRACKS

The Department stands out for its concentration of faculty and resources in several areas that are grouped into doctoral research tracks. Doctoral students choose to major in one of these four tracks, and students in each track take two core seminars in their specialization.

Religions in the Americas, including both indigenous and immigrant religions and their expressions in Canada, the United States, Mexico, and the nations of South and Central America. Resources for the study of religion in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands are particularly strong. Courses include:

REL 720 The Study of Religion in North America
REL 721 Latin American Religious History

Religions in Asia, including the transnational and indigenous traditions of China, Japan, Korea, India, and the nations of Southeast Asia. Courses include:

REL 750 Buddhist History and Practice
REL 751 Topics in Buddhist Studies

Islam In Global Context, with concentration on historical and contemporary expressions in Southeast Asia, West Africa, and South Asia. Courses include:

REL 760 Islamic Thought
REL 761 Islam in Regional Contexts

Religion and conflict, including religious discourse in the public sphere, religious violence and nation states, religious conflict and the secular, debates over religion and science, and comparative ethics and theories of religious or just war. Courses include:

REL 710 Religion, Civil Society and Conflict
REL 711 Religion and Violence

Departmental strengths in these areas are complemented by faculty expertise in Jewish Studies, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Religions of Russia.

The Department of Religious Studies also works closely with the University’s Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict. The Center’s mission is to stimulate and support research and education on religion and public controversies, from the civil to the violent, in national and international contexts. Bringing together faculty from a variety of fields within and beyond ASU, the Center sponsors conferences, workshops, and colloquia throughout the year and is a potential source of research and funding opportunities for students.

Graduate students in religious studies additionally benefit from the resources of other departments, centers, and programs, including the African American Studies Program, the Department of Chicana/Chicano Studies, the Asian Pacific American Studies Program, the Hispanic Research Center, the Center for Latin American Studies, the Program for Southeast Asian Studies, the Center for Asian Studies, the Department of Philosophy, the Jewish Studies Program, the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Russian and Eastern European Studies Center, and the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics.

THE PROGRAM

In addition to developing their chosen area of expertise, students completing the doctoral program will receive broad training in the academic study of religion, including method and theory, and will acquire competency in teaching a general course in world religions.

In consultation with the doctoral advisor, and in addition to a major research track, each student will choose a methodological minor, i.e., a disciplinary or interdisciplinary approach to the study of religion, informed by related disciplines such as history, anthropology, sociology, political science, philosophy, and law. A minimum of 9 credit hours are taken in the methodological minor, and students are strongly encouraged to pursue work outside the department.

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DOCTORAL DEGREE

Phase I:

30 hours of graduate course work and readings, including three semester hours of research (REL 592) and six hours of method and theory (REL 501 and 502); upon approval, up to 6 credit can be earned in related fields.

6 semester hours of thesis credit (REL 599) for the M.A. thesis or 3 semester hours of research (590) for a research paper.

Admission to candidacy for the Ph.D. is granted on the basis of performance in phase I, the quality of M.A. research, faculty recommendations, and other relevant information.

Phase II:

30 semester hours of graduate course work in religious studies, including up to 12 hours in related fields.

3 credit hours in Religious Studies Faculty/Graduate Workshop (REL 600), a course featuring the research of faculty, invited guests, and advanced graduate students.

3 credit hours in Teaching World Religions (REL 603), a combined practicum and seminar in which doctoral students gain experience teaching, with close faculty supervision, REL 100, Religions of the World.

Demonstrated foreign language proficiency in the languages of both primary sources and scholarly literature in the major field of specialization.

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.

Oral defense of the dissertation proposal.

Phase III:

24 semester hours of dissertation research supervised by a committee of at least three faculty members; oral defense of the dissertation.

THE FACULTY

You can also learn more about our FACULTY, AFFILIATED FACULTY, and COGNATE FACULTY by visiting the FACULTY section of our website.

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 practices among Mayan religious specialists in the Yucatán peninsula.

LINELL E. CADY

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

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 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 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.

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.

ABDULLAHI GALLAB

(Ph.D., Brigham Young University, 1997/Department of Sociology) is an Assistant Professor with special interests in Islam and media and politics in Africa.

ALEXANDER HENN

(Ph.D., University of Heidelberg, 2000/Department of Anthropology) is an Associate Professor 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.

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 n 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. He is also Director of the Center for Latin American Studies.

M. SANI UMAR

(Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1997, History and Literature of Religion) is an Associate Professor of Islam with special interests in Islam and colonialism in West Africa, Islamic law, Sufism and anti-Sufism in West Africa, contemporary Islamic thought, and theory and method in the study of religion.

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.

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

JEFFRIE MURPHY

(Ph.D., University of Rochester, 1966/Philosophy Department) 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.

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:

Graduate Director,

Department of Religious Studies, Mail Code 3104

Arizona State University, Tempe AZ 85287-3104

PHONE: (480) 965-7145

FAX: (480) 965-5139

EMAIL: gradrs@asu.edu