Degree Offered: Ph.D.

This Area embraces both cross-cultural and historical themes, building upon scholarly methodologies that advance critical understandings of interreligious, multicultural, and contextual religious experience. Traditions available for study include: Buddhism, Chinese and Japanese religions, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, diasporic African religions, and other religious traditions for which the GTU has appropriate faculty. Faculty specialties include: feminism, ethnic studies, mysticism and spirituality, interreligious learning, interfaith encounters and dialogue, ritual studies, queer theory, translation theory, postcolonial theory, HIV/AIDS, bodies, gender theory, videotics, folklore, and interdisciplinary studies of religious phenomena (myth, symbol, ritual).

Most students in Cultural and Historical Studies of Religions are preparing for academic careers of research and teaching. A few graduates are preparing to participate in interreligious dialogue or education, or to work on interreligious issues in a church or other agency in a specific cultural context.

Objectives:

1. Students will learn to recognize the contours of scholarship in the field of religious studies and find their own place within it.
2. Students will demonstrate both a broad grounding and a developed specialization in a particular religious tradition or culture and its history.
3. Students will learn to employ a religious studies methodology suited to their particular research specialization.
4. Students will work through the issues of constructing a syllabus for an introductory course and will formulate a pedagogical philosophy and approach.
5. Students will design and execute an original research project that makes a significant contribution to their field of specialization.

Admissions Requirements
The Area requires a clear and focused statement of academic purpose, specifying a field for which the GTU has appropriate faculty resources and the student has appropriate academic background and basic language preparation.

Diagnostic Instrument
At the outset of doctoral work, the student will submit a written Draft Academic Plan, which specifies prior background, career goals, and specific interests. This plan will be used as an advising tool, and will be critically analyzed and developed during the required Area seminar.

Language Requirements
The Area requires two foreign languages, at least one a modern research language (e.g. French, German, Japanese). The second language might be a classical language, a field language, or a second research language. The languages are presented to the Area as a written language proposal, framed by student and advisor, and approved by the entire Area, and then certified following the GTU’s procedures. At least one modern foreign language must be certified before the student moves on to comprehensive exams; classical or field languages may be certified later, prior to proposing the dissertation, if the advisor agrees a specific language is not necessary for the comprehensives.

Course Work
The Area requires that students take HR 6001 (Seminar on Interdisciplinarity and Religious Studies) in their first fall semester. They must also take HR 6006 (Issues in Contemporary Study of Religion), offered by the Area. Students are also expected to work with their advisors to identify and take courses that will prepare them for broad certification and comprehensives. Students doing the teaching preparation comprehensives (below) must take IDS 6016 (Seminar on Course Design and Syllabus Development).

Comprehensive Examinations
In the course of their studies, students are expected to establish a broad grounding in their tradition or culture of specialization and in their chosen methodology. Students submit a statement of prior or current course work, reading, examinations, or writing that will serve as Certification of Broad Grounding. With broad grounding certified, Comprehensive Examinations are somewhat more focused and lead to the dissertation and the specific teaching and writing goals of the student.

The Area requires four Comprehensive Examinations.

1. Religious tradition or culture of specialization
   The student will have certified breadth in a particular tradition as part of Certifying Broad Grounding. The tradition may be a religious tradition (e.g., Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, and indigenous tradition) or a religious culture, such as that of India, China, or Ghana (any of which would include several traditions). The broad tradition or culture of specialization should be sufficiently broad to serve as a “job category” for purposes of hiring.
   
   Since the student has completed Certification of Broad Grounding in the tradition or culture, this Comprehensive Examination will focus on the student's significant specialization within the tradition (an historical period, a major theme—e.g. Chan or Zen Buddhism, Modern Jewish Thought, Religious pluralism in contemporary India).
   
   This examination is normally taken as a closed-book timed exam, meeting the GTU requirement that comprehensives include such an examination.
   
   
2. Methodology
   Scholars in religious studies use a wide range of methodologies (historical, philological, interpretive, anthropological, feminist, critical, postcolonial, etc.) The required course HR 6006, Issues in Contemporary Study of Religion, introduces students to a range of literature in religious studies using various methodologies and approaches, and encourages students to consider these literatures in relation to their own scholarly approaches. This examination will require the student to explore in some depth critical issues in a methodology that s/he intends to uses in his/her research. The student will develop a select bibliography in consultation with the comprehensive committee, and write a bibliographic essay or a critical essay on methodological issues.
   
   
3. Preparation for Teaching
   This examination requires the student to prepare a full syllabus with clearly defined objectives, requirements, expectations, evaluation criteria, and a reading list for an introductory course with no prerequisites. The course can be an introductory course in the student’s religious tradition or culture of specialization (see exam 1), an introduction to the study of religion, a course on world religions, or an introductory course whose scope is broader than the student’s religious tradition or culture of specialization. The syllabus is to be accompanied by a 15-20 page paper describing the intellectual approach of the course and specifying the decisions made about both content and instruction. The bibliography should include literature on pedagogy as well as on the topic of the course. Students doing this comprehensive are required to take Doctoral Seminar IDS 6016 Seminar on Course Design and Syllabus Development as a context in which to develop this syllabus.
   
   Students whose primary professional goals are other than teaching may petition for an alternative form of this comprehensive, designed to prepare them to meet their professional goals. The petition should include a project or course and paper equivalent in sophistication to the pedagogical requirement. The student would develop the petition with their advisor/committee and submit it to the Area for approval in principle prior to proposing comprehensives.
   
   
4. Research Paper
   This paper represents the student’s distinctive approach to research in religious studies, using the methodology discussed in examination 2 in conjunction with the religious tradition or culture discussed in examination 1. The paper may be related to the topic of the dissertation, but should be a self-contained, autonomous 30-40 page research paper.

Dissertation
Area students are expected to meet all general GTU requirements and standards for the dissertation proposal and the dissertation.  In addition, Area students must have demonstrated proficiency in their classical or field work languages (in addition to modern research languages) prior to proposing the dissertation. Languages should be appropriately represented in the bibliographies of the proposal and of the dissertation.

The primary responsibility for vetting the proposal lies with the student’s committee; normally the committee will have thoroughly reviewed several drafts of the proposal before it comes to the Area. Area reviews will give special attention to coherence of the proposal, clear articulation so that the proposal is understandable beyond a small sub-specialty, appropriate methodology, appropriate use of languages, and recognition of the research’s location within the larger field of religious studies.

 
Allied Field Requirements
Satisfactorily complete HR 6006, take a course 3000 or above in a tradition beyond their tradition of specialization, in which students write a substantial essay equivalent to comprehensives examination 2.

CORE DOCTORAL FACULTY IN CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL STUDIES OF RELIGIONS

JUDITH A. BERLING • GTU (Chinese and comparative religions)
Chinese religions; interdisciplinarity; interreligious learning; Confucian and Daoist spiritualities.

IBRAHIM FARAJAJÉ • SKSM (Cultural Studies/Islamic Studies)
Study of Islam; history of Sufism; history of Islam; Jewish-Muslim interconnections; postcolonial theory/transmodern theory; critical race theory; diaspora studies; HIV/AIDS; bodies, genders, and space in Islam; videotics; Al-Andalus (Jewish-Christian-Muslim Spain).

EISHO NASU • IBS (Shin Buddhism)
History of Pure Land Buddhist thought; Shin Buddhist history and thought; works of Shinran; readings in Mahayana texts: the three Pure Land Sutras.

RICHARD PAYNE • IBS (Japanese Buddhism)
Tantric fire ritual; ritual studies; ritual historiography and ritual structure.

NAOMI SEIDMAN • GTU (Jewish Culture)
Translation theory and the Bible in translation; secular Jewish culture; modern Jewish literature.

EDMOND YEE • PLTS (Asian Studies)
Chinese aesthetics; Ming chuanqui and Neo-Confucianism.

CONSORTIAL FACULTY RESOURCES

THOMAS CATTOI • JSTB (Christology and Cultures; Tibetan Buddhism)
Christology; patristic theology; comparative theology (especially Christian Buddhist dialogue); systematic theology and critical theory.

MARIANNE FARINA • DSPT (Philosophy and Theology)
Moral theology; philosophical ethics; Islam; sexual ethics; social justice.

LISA GRUMBACH • IBS (Buddhist Studies)
History of Buddhism; Shinto and Japanese religions; religion and landscape.

MUNIR JIWA • GTU (Islamic Studies)
Islamic studies (Muslim art, aesthetics, and media; Muslim identity and representation); postcolonialism; globalization; religious pluralism; fundamentalisms and violence.

JOHN HILARY MARTIN • DSPT (History of Religions)
Myth and ritual; noetics of symbolism; interreligious dialogue.

DAVID MATSUMOTO • IBS (Buddhist Studies)
Jodo Shinshu history and thought.

LEWIS RAMBO • SFTS (Psychology and Religion)
Psychology of religion; cinema; anthropology of religion; congregational studies; conversion theory.

JAMES REDINGTON • JSTB (Interreligious Dialogue and Hinduism)
Hindu devotion and wisdom; dialogue and theology of religions.