Department News

Fall 2012 - Spring 2013

• The Program of Religious Studies is officially designated as Department of Religious Studies
• For the 4th year in a row, Professor Tyler Fall has received the P.I.E. award in 2013. The Promoting Intellectual Engagement Award honors instructors of first-year courses, nominated by sophomore students, who inspire excitement, inquiry and autonomy in the classroom.

• Congratulations! to Dr. Antoinette DeNapoli who was a 2013 nominee for the "Each Student - A Person Award," a recognition made available Dr. James Hurst.

• Dr. Mary L. Keller was invited to "European Contributions to Comparative Studies Conference: Spirit Possession" in Pécs, Hungary, home of the oldest university in Hungary, Sept. 14-17, 2012. Dr. Keller was among 31 scholars including cognitive scientists, historians, anthropologists, and ethnographers from Europe, Australia, and Canada.  Her paper, "Spirit Possession from an Indigenous Studies Perspective: What's Speaking Through Us in the 21st Century" built on four previous publications on spirit possession, including the book The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power and Spirit Possession (John Hopkins University Press, 2002).  The conference included ethnographic films of Catholic exorcisms in Western Uganda and spirit possession traditions in Kenya. Dr. Keller's argument included that spirit possession is the central model of religious subjectivity, not an aberrant extreme, because it presents us with a model of the human as the site for interaction with religious power (ancestors, deities, spirits).