Newsletter 2001 Contents
Solomon-Tenenbaum & Joseph Cardinal Bernadin
Lectureships: Deborah Lipstadt &
Bud Welch guest speakers
1
New Faculty:Jon Michael Spencer joins faculty
2
Graduate Program Strengthened
3
Department News in Brief
4
Alumni News
8
Bicentennial
11
Editor's Note
12
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Newsletter: Lectureships
DEBORAL LIPSTADT AND BUD WELCH
FILL NAMED LECTURESHIPS
Fresh from her victory in the libel case brought by the
writer, David Irving, in a London court, Deborah Lipstadt
gave this year's Solomon-Tenenbaum Lectures in
September: “For the Sake of Truth and Memory: David
Irving v. Deborah Lipstadt” and “New perspectives on
Holocaust Denial.” Lipstadt, author of Beyond Belief: The
American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust (1986)
and Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth Deborah Lipstadt
and Memory (1993), is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish
and Holocaust Studies at Emory University.
Emmett E. “Bud” Welch, critic of the death penalty, widely known father of a daughter
killed along with 167 others in the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb blast, gave the second
annual Joseph Cardinal Bernadin Lecture in October. His evening lecture, “From Rage
to Reconciliation,” was preceded by an afternoon panel discussion with Donny Myers,
Solicitor of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit; Jan Love, Assoc. Prof. of Government and
International Studies; and Donald Zalenka, Asst. Deputy Attorney General of SC.
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Newsletter: New Faculty
SPENCER JOINS FACULTY
By Amy Polit
Three large pieces of framed Egyptian art color the office walls of
Jon Michael Spencer, and an Indian scarf lies in a swirl of rich
reds and maroons on his desk. USC's new Professor of Religious
Studies with a courtesy appointment in English has been deeply
affected by his travels.
"I do not prepare before class;" Spencer said to an interviewer, "I
prepare always as a lifestyle." That lifestyle has involved
extensive journeying across the African and Asian continents.
Jon Michael Spencer
Such movement is important, Spencer urged, "because creativity
and insight are dependent on the ability to make bridges between disparate aspects of
history and culture--we can better know by comparison."
One such comparison Spencer drew was between the rhythms of India and Africa.
Despite the vast cultural waters that separate these two regions, what Spencer found is
that their "similarities in rhythmicity" indicate "we're more alike than we're different."
Spencer bridged his own musical and theological interests when he added the greater
lesson learned, namely, that "from God's purview, all of reality is one; there is a
singleness of aliveness."
Unless Spencer's self-portrait sound too high-flown, it is important to note that his
philosophy has found concrete realization in fourteen published books and in rewarding
teaching experiences at six different institutions, ranging from small, private to large,
state schools.
In the classroom, Spencer brings to bear all the knowledge he has gathered on his
travels. He attempts to mold students who engage, instead of merely encounter,
knowledge. "Engagement suggests an active involvement with the knowledge, and
that's what I'm after. When you engage something you will be changed," Spencer said.
Here, too, the results speak for themselves--"There are a handful of students who, after
ten years, we're still part of each others' lives." When asked to contrast the students he
has taught at a half-dozen institutions, Spencer summed his life's lesson, "I don't try to
pretend that the differences aren't there, but I am training myself to see the beauty
beneath the surface in all things."
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Newsletter: Graduate Program
BLACKBURN, LEWIS
STRENGTHEN PROGRAM
By Amy Polit
What John Keats calls a “mellow fruitfulness” comes with
maturity. But a tougher rind comes too. The Graduate
Studies program as it ripens and reshapes will offer more
to its degree candidates and demand more also. For
instance, the newly “altered degree requirements place a
greater stress on language training and other foundational
skills required for original research and allow advisors to
better tailor introductory materials to the needs of their
Anne Blackburn and Kevin Lewis
incoming advisees” says Anne Blackburn.
Blackburn has been chiefly responsible for the revisions of the M.A. curriculum which
were approved this December 2000. Other changes in the works include an increased
“interdisciplinarity of advanced study within the department” alongside improved
“resources and supervision available to graduate students.”
The innovative Faculty Associates program devised by Blackburn will be crucial in
providing these new opportunities. Faculty for the program are selected by invitation
from a variety of departmental fields at USC and at other local academies. These
professors will welcome Religious Studies graduate students into their classrooms,
provide occasion for specialized independent studies, and assist with theses and
comprehensive examinations.
This is what the department will offer. What it will demand are students of serious intent
who aim to use the program to prepare for advanced study in religious studies and
related disciplines. Blackburn notes encouragingly that “the department receives an
increasing number of applications from such students and aims to develop its reputation
as a transitional program in several sub-fields of religious studies.”
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Newsletter: Shorts 2001
Departmental News in Brief
FACULTY
Carl Evans
Originally published in Bible Review, Carl Evans' article,
“The Patriarch Jacob-An Innocent Man,” will be
republished in The Family of Abraham (Biblical Archeology
Society, 2000). In March he presented his research on
ethnic and religious identity and categories of otherness in
ancient Judah to the Faculty Research Seminar sponsored
by the Walker Institute. In the fall he will begin his third
Dean of the College of Liberal
term as department chair.
Arts, Joan Hinde Steward and
Carl Evans appraise a vessel
from an Iron Age 1 storage
chamber at Tel Rumeideh
(Hebron).
Kevin Lewis
Kevin Lewis's short memoir, “Innocence and Experience,” is included
among contributions to a volume, Born Into a World at War, in which
thirty-one Harvard classmates from 1965 reflect on the impact that World
War II had upon their families. He published a note on Wladyslaw
Szpilman's The Pianist in Religious Studies Review and a poem, "In the
Furnace of Desire" (for Maurice “Rocket” Richard) in Aethlon: The Journal
of Sport Literature.
In November he made a formal response to a paper, “To the Advantage
of Infidelity, Or How Not to Deal with Religion in America's Public Schools” (by Richard
A. Baer, Jr., and James C. Carper), in a public seminar sponsored by the College of
Education. In January he gave a paper, “Lest We Forget the Devine Sarah,” to the local
Loblollies Society and took up a Governor's appointment on the SC Holocaust Council.
In March he presented papers on W.H. Auden (Southeast Sectional, American
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Academy of Religion) and on Iago's aria, Credo in un dio crudel, in Verdi's Otello
(Nineteenth-Century Studies Association).
Donald Jones
Donald Jones continues to serve as associate chair of the
department, providing invocations and benedictions at University
public events.
Anne Blackburn
Anne Blackburn spent much of last summer at Harvard working on her translation of an
18th-century Buddhist historical text from Sri Lanka and completing
three related articles. The revised MA curriculum approved by the
Graduate Council in December and the new faculty associates
program for the department are the products chiefly of her industry
and vision.
Her book, Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in the Monastic
Culture of 18th-Century Sri Lanka, will appear from Princeton
University Press later this spring. This semester she is teaching a new
version of her course, “Introduction to Buddhism,” using American
Anne Blackburn
Buddhism as a foundation from which to examine the history of
Buddhism in Asia.
In May she will conduct research in London and in 2001-2002 go on leave, with NEH
fellowship support, to pursue the project, “Education, Devotion and Identity in Late
Colonial Sri Lanka.”
Jim Cutsinger
James Cutsinger, promoted to the rank of
professor last year, has been devoting much
of his time to plans for the conference “Paths
to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East”
(October 18-20, 2001), a major international
symposium, sponsored in part by the USC
Bicentennial Commission, which will bring
together leading authorities on the mystical
dimension of Islam and the Eastern Church.
(For further information and to register online, visit www.pathstotheheart.com.) He is in
the beginning stages of editing The Collected Works of Frithjof Schuon, and his
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upcoming lectures include “Anselm's Excitatio Mentis” at Thomas Aquinas College in
April. For more, visit www.cutsinger.net.
Hal French
In January Hal French gave a keynote address, “A Place of Meeting
Rivers,” at a gathering sponsored by the World Congress of Faiths
and the International Association for Religious Freedom in St.
Petersburg, Florida. March found him in Oxford, England, where he
reported on interfaith activity in North America to the annual meeting
of the International Interfaith Centre.
Hal French
Jon Michael Spencer
In the break between semesters Jon Michael Spencer traveled to
India seeking influence upon his own musical compositions and to
continue photographing Islamic architecture. He collected books by
Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore in preparation for
offering a course on Martin Luther King, Jr., and for writing a book on
creativity.
Jon Michael Spencer
ASSOCIATES
The department continues to enjoy the services of Mark Jones, Randy Akers, and
Rabbi Sandy Marcus as instructors in courses offered in religious studies and, in the
case of Marcus's two-semester sequence on the history of Judaism, cross-listed with
History.
K.L. Seshagiri Rao continues as Editor in Chief of the Encyclopedia of Hinduism, a
major project sponsored by the department, and as co-editor of World Faiths Encounter
(the journal of the World Congress of Faiths), as well as adjunct member of this
department's faculty. Dr. Rao gave a keynote address, “Mahatma Gandhi and Martin
Luther King, Jr.,” at the St. Petersburg, Florida meeting.
Anne Lucht, executive assistant
Anne (Mrs. Thomas) Lucht has served the department as executive
assistant and sole staff support since 1986. She reports that son Robert is
a sophomore at USC in Columbia. Son William,who is five, keeps her
running.
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GRADUATE STUDENTS
Congratulations to successful defenders of MA theses since the appearance of last
year's newsletter: Mark Jennings (“Honor, Shame, and Patronage: A Study of the
Conflict of 1st Corinthians”), Kevin Vaccarella (“Demographics and Israelite Religion: A
Reevaluation of the Motivations Behind the Late Monarchic Reforms”), and Brandice
Whiten (“Ethical and Religious Paradigms in Apocalyptic Womanist Science Fiction”).
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Newsletter: Alumni News 2001
Alumni News
Wade Kolb ('00) and Joshua Robinson ('02) are
associate students this year at the Centre for Medieval
and Renaissance Studies in Oxford, where, as Wade
reports, they “have 'learnt' a great deal about English,
Latin, theology, and spelling (though not humour),” and
where “dinner in an Oxford college is a grand experience.”
James Cutsinger with the 2000
winner of the undergraduate
Elizabeth Dodge Clarke Prize,
Wade Kolb
Jack Montgomery ('76) is collection services coordinator
at Western Kentucky University Libraries. He has lectured
on conflict management at professional meetings in
Chicago, Louisville, and Charleston, and developed
seminars in conjunction with upcoming publication of his
book on the subject. He still performs the “Blue Christmas”
number for which he is remembered in these parts, now
with a middle-aged trio, “The Lost River Rockers.”
Tim Allen ('82) earned an MA in Religious Studies at UNC-Charlotte, teaches in a
community college, and is progressing toward his doctorate through the Graduate
Theological Foundation. His most recent book is Language of the Heart: A Pastoral
Theology of God-Talk (Haworth Pastoral Press). His most recent article, “God-Talk as
Apocalyptic,” was published in The Journal of Pastoral Care.
Steven Boyer ('83) is professor of theology and chairman of the department of religious
studies at Eastern College in St. Davids, PA.
Sharon (Graf) Pichai ('84) is a mother of two girls and is a homemaker in Silicon
Valley. She and her husband claim the Orthodox tradition and currently attend a church
with people of primarily Christian Palestinian descent.
Amy Benson Brown ('88) held an appointment at the State University of Georgia and
has published a book, Rewriting the Word: American Women Writers and the Bible.
Monica (Lane) Humpal ('93) earned her Masters from Lutheran Theological Southern
Seminary in 1995, married Steven Humpal in 1996, and serves as program director and
director of Christian Education at Lyttleton Street, United Methodist Church, Camden.
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Wayne Kannaday, MA ('94, UNC-Chapel Hill, ABD), is an assistant professor at
Newberry College, SC. His paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Society of
Biblical Literature in Nashville last November.
David Battle, MA ('95), has taught at Southern Methodist College, Orangeburg, and
now entered the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, where he will earn
a PhD in Old Testament Archeology.
Jan Gillette, MA ('95), is pursuing a seven-month course in the Goethean Studies
program at the Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, CA.
Ron Gilmer, MA ('95), is completing his PhD dissertation on John Updike in religious
studies at the Florida State University. He has given numerous papers at various
professional society meetings.
Joe Gagne, MA ('96), will retire this summer from teaching religious studies at USCSumter.
Tina Katsanos, MA ('96), has been teaching courses at UNC-Charlotte, Jackson C.
Smith University, and Cabamus-Rowan Community College.
Motomasa Murayama, MA ('96), has a teaching appointment at Tokiwa University,
Japan, and was married in December.
Bryan Sinclair, MA ('96), is public services librarian and electronic resources &
government documents coordinator at the Ramsay Library, UNC-Ashville.
Christy Lohr, MA ('97), has been elected to the board of directors of the North
American Interfaith Network. She lives in New York City, where she works for the
ecumenical Temple of Understanding.
Dorothy Brown, MA ('98), has been teaching part-time at Coker College and the USC
extension at Fort Jackson while she completes her PhD in History at USC.
Michael King, MA ('98), is a system administrator for an Internet start-up, Community
Connect, Inc., in New York City, creating “online communities for American ethnic
groups.”
Sutton Smith, MA ('98), has entered a PhD program in theology at Fordham University.
Amy Suessle, MA ('99), has entered the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine.
Kiki Warthen ('99) is completing her M.Ed. in Educational Research at USC and will
enter the USC School of Law in the fall.
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Mark Jennings, MA ('00), has entered a PhD program in New Testament studies at
Oxford University, England.
Kevin Vaccarella, MA ('00), has begun work in a PhD program in religions of western
antiquity at the Florida State University.
Brandice Whiten, MA ('00), is studying philosophy part-time in North Carolina and
planning to apply to an advanced graduate program in ethics.
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Newsletter: Bicentennial
Anniversaries
The Bicentennial Year, 2001, marks the fifty-second anniversary of the establishment of
this department in 1949 by now distinguished emeritus
professor Lauren E. Brubaker. 2001 marks the thirty-third
anniversary of the establishment of the Bachelor's degree
in religious studies in 1968, and the thirteenth anniversary
of the Master's degree in 1988.
Rutledge college
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Newsletter: Editor's Note 2001
This department salutes progress. Last year's revision of
psychiatry's most recent handbook classifying clinical diagnoses includes (under Code
V62.89) the alert that people may experience distress related to religious and spiritual
experience without necessarily suffering a mental disorder.
Only since the 1994 update of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM-IV) has religious anxiety, along with “malingering” and the antisocial behavior of
“thieves, racketeers, or dealers in illegal substances” been accorded such respect.
If the experience is “more integrating than disintegrating,” then, as the DSM-IV
Sourcebook suggests, diagnoses of mania, schizophrenia, or hysteria may not be
indicated. The religious studies faculty agrees with this new finding.
Issues of differential diagnosis aside, welcome to the noting of our scholarly behaviors
in these columns. You, reader, may judge whether our news reflects a collective
experience more integrating than disintegrating.
Special thanks to MA candidates, Emily Aleshire and Amy Polit, for their help with this
issue.
Kevin Lewis