Professor Brett Esaki's essay "Whiteness Studies--Why Not to Teach it (As an Untentured Professor)" was recently published in the American Academy of Religion's professonal magazine Religious Studies News in the "Spotlight on Teaching" special issue on Anti-Racism Education. 

Click to read Prof. Esaki's essay or the entire special issue.

The Department of Religious Studies and Classics hosted local high school students enrolled in AP World History courses. Over two days (Oct. 8-9), the visiting students met with Professors Alison Jameson and Robert Stephan and attended several courses offered by Religious Studies and Classics professors on campus. 

For more information, see coverage of the event in the UA Daily Wildcat.

Professor Daisy Vargas was recently featured on Arizona Public Media's weekly public affairs show Arizona360. In the episode that aired on September 21, 2018, Professor Vargas discusses the impact of the recent sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and its impact on people in Arizona.

Watch the full episode here: Arizona360

Professor Brett Esaki has been invited by the Department of Philsophy and Religious Studies at Middle Tennessee State to give a public lecture entitled "Legacy of Dominance in Japanese American Monuments." The lecture will be September 14, 2018 in Murfreesboro, TN.

Lecture Abstract:

Controversies surround monuments because they dominate space with one version of history. Japanese Americans have created monuments and utilized this power to express their ancestors’ legacy of surviving dominance, notably the overt racism of the 19^thcentury, the World War II internment camps, and WWII atomic bombs. Yet even while illustrating the horrors of domination, controversies arose around Japanese American monuments regarding their domination of space. In this lecture, Dr. Esaki will detail controversies around three monuments, especially how the Japanese American artists carefully negotiated politically fraught environments while maintaining roots in Japanese American religions. In the process, he will shed light on the hope and ruin intrinsic to the legacy of dominance in monuments. 

In their new book Nine Nights of the Goddess: The Navarātri Festival in South Asia (SUNY Press), UA Religious Studies Professor Caleb Simmons, Dr. Moumita Sen (University of Oslo), and Professor Hillary Rodrigues (University of Lethbridge) bring together sixteen renowned scholars from around the world to explore various aspects of the Indian festival of Navarātri. 

From the publisher's website:

Nine Nights of the Goddess explores the festival of Navarātri—alternatively called Navarātra, Mahānavamī, Durgā Pūjā, Dasarā, and/or Dassain—which lasts for nine nights and ends with a celebration called Vijayadaśamī, or “the tenth (day) of victory.” Celebrated in both massive public venues and in small, private domestic spaces, Navarātri is one of the most important and ubiquitous festivals in South Asia and wherever South Asians have settled. These festivals share many elements, including the goddess, royal power, the killing of demons, and the worship of young girls and married women, but their interpretation and performance vary widely. This interdisciplinary collection of essays investigates Navarātri in its many manifestations and across historical periods, including celebrations in West Bengal, Odisha, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and Nepal. Collectively, the essays consider the role of the festival’s contextual specificity and continental ubiquity as a central component for understanding South Asian religious life, as well as how it shapes and is shaped by political patronage, economic development, and social status.

“This is a unique collection of marvelously diverse perspectives on one of the most prominent contemporary Hindu festivals. Even those who know much about Durgā Pūjā should prepare to be fascinated by the work of these scholars.” — Patricia Dold, Memorial University

For more information about the book or for a free download of the book's "Introduction" co-written by Professor Simmons, please visit: https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6598-nine-nights-of-the-goddess.aspx

Professor Max Strassfeld recently published an article titled "Transing Religious Studies" in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (Vol. 34, No.1, Spring 2018). In this article, Prof. Strassfeld considers "the effects of th[e] constructed incongruity between religion and transgender--both the direct impacts on trans people and the legacy within religious studies as an academic pursuit" through a close reading of the Mississippi House Bill (HB) 1523, which has recently gone into effect.

The article served as the focus of a roundtable discussion at the heart of the journal issue in which leading scholars of Religious Studies responded. Respondents included Joy Ladin, Ellen T. Armour, Evren Savci, Cameron Partridge, Judith Plaskow, Zohar Weiman-Kelman, Melissa M. Wilcox, and Robyn Henderson-Espinoza.

Professor Strassfeld's essay has received critical acclaim as "groundbreaking" (p. 53), "intrigu[ing] and persua[sive]" (p. 58), "critical" and "unprecedented" (p. 68), and "important and provocative" (p. 75).  

Two Religious Studies Majors, Blayne Roach and Zy Mazza, have won college-wide awards from the University of Arizona College of Humanities. 

Blayne Roach (Majors: Religious Studies, Physiology) was awarded the 2018 Van de Verde Memorial Scholarship, which is given to an upper-division student in the College of Humanities who has demonstrated outstanding achievement and promise.

Zy Mazza (Major: Religious Studies) was awarded the 2018 Humanities Matter Scholarship, which is determined largely on the basis of the required essay titled “Why the Humanities Matter in My Life & in the World" that articulates the importance of the Humanities.

Congratulations, Blayne and Zy!!!

Religious Studies major Rob Lisak is the recipient of the 2018 Donna Swaim International Award for Religious Studies, which will help support his study abroad trip to China with the Arizona in Hangzhou program.

Rob Lisak writes: “Religious Studies is not simply about a degree for me. This is truly about being able to see another human being completely and understand as much as I can. Maybe to help start a discourse with someone someday who hasn't looked in the places I have for that understanding. I believe those conversations will lead to conversations beyond me. Last week, I met a student from one of my classes for coffee and to discuss Emile Durkheim. He is devoutly Jewish, I am not. I asked how Durkheim's ideas regarding society and religion affected him. The conversation got wide in scope.  We talked about Christianity and Islam, and Judaism and the Inquisition and the Holocaust.  We talked about Buddhism and Taoism and the Hindu ideas of the Brahman and Atman.  We have both visited Auschwitz so we reflected on that and the effects of Adolf Hitler.  We talked about science and astronomy and Relativity and the Big Bang Theory.  At a point, he looked at me and said, ‘So, how do we change the world?’.  I said, ‘We are changing it right now by having this conversation.’”