Past Theses
2020-21
Naomi Fastovsky
Speaking-Back: A Circulatory History of Yiguandao
Adviser: Kenneth Brashier
Xingang He
Studies on Fang Yizhi: Sketches of a Chinese Intellectual in Tumultuous Time
Adviser: Kenneth Brashier
Ursula Hirschi
American Dakinis: Understanding the Encounter between Western Feminism and Tibetan Buddhism
Adviser: Michael Foat
Natalie Lasko
Anthropology-Religion
4chan and Islamophobia
Adviser: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri and Paul Silverstein
Teddy Lindberg
Religious and Racial Inheritance in White Racialist Paganism
Adviser: Steven Wasserstrom
Aleena Ortiz
The Transnational Eco-Religiosity of Hayao Miyazaki
Adviser: Steven Wasserstrom
Hannah Tutt
Faith and Prophetic Activisim
Adviser: Michael Foat
2019-20
Claire Berlinger
Systemizing the Chemical Divine: On the Relationship Between God and Matter in F.J.W. Schelling
Adviser: Michael Foat
Lucía Fernández Calleja
Meditation Apps: An Autoethnographic and Ritual Analysis
Adviser: Kristin Scheible
Sophia DeVita
Words Make Worlds: Complicating the Secular
Adviser: Steve Wasserstrom
Louise Hewitt
Circling Back to Religion: An Exploration of Restorative Justice as Ritualized Practice
Adviser: Kristin Scheible
Delainey Myers
Religious Foundations: Interfaith Organizations and Affordable Housing
Adviser: Kristin Scheible
Tom Sullivan
A Light on the Margins: A Study in the Inter-religious Life of Shlomo Ibn Gabirol
Adviser: Steve Wasserstrom
2018-19
Ateha Bailly
I and I: An Analysis of the Ritualized Use of Haile Selassie in Rastafari
Adviser: Steven Wasserstrom
Chiara Boisserée
The Borders of Universalism: Islam and Public Discourse in France
Adviser: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Michael Benjamin Carbone
Workers of the Ummah, Unite!: Gamal al-Banna's Conception of Islamic Trade Unions
Adviser: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Sara Córdoba
Castles in the Sky: The Role of Architecture in Built Religious Space
Adviser: Kristin Scheible
Andrea Deniz Güriş Herrera
Drinking to Get Drunk: The Influences of Wine in Islamic History
Adviser: Kenneth Brashier
Ruth E. Hale
Revisiting Scriptures for America: Myth and Media in a 20th Century Theology of White Nationalism
Adviser: Steven Wasserstrom
Riley Hert
Two Paths to the Same God: Finding Faith and God in Alfred Tennyson's In Memoriam and William Buckland's Geology and Mineralogy
Adviser: Kenneth Brashier
Lauren Jewell Matthews
Rabi'a al-Adawiyya: A Woman on the Path
Adviser: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Jona Ford Mensch
Knowledge Becomes Love: An Analysis of Pavel Florensky's The Pillar and Ground of the Truth
Adviser: Michael Foat
Tehniyat Naveed
Religion, Land Use and Zoning Laws: Islamic Institutions in Oregon
Adviser: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Sah Nelson
Richard Dawkins and the God-hypothesis: Is New Atheism's Founder Religious?
Adviser: Michael Foat
Riley H. Woollen
Profane Angels: U.S. Advertising's Cultural Ascendence Post-1971
Adviser: Steve Wasserstrom
2017-18
Ava Kamb
The Hospital Chaplain between Worlds
Adviser: Ken Brashier
Sophia McKean
I’m Right in the Center of What Moves Me: Gay and Lesbian Experience in the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco
Adviser: Michael Foat
Dustin Weinreb
The Wrath of Turāth: Hassan Hanafi’s Construction of Modernism through Islamic Tradition
Adviser: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Katharine Steele
Forced Crossings and Katrina Crosses: How Religion Survived the Hurricane
Adviser: Ken Brashier
2016-17
Melaina Ecker
"Sharing the Good News" : Mobilizing Protestant Values through Faith-Based Anti-Sex Trafficking Activism
Adviser: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Maria Carpenter
Sharing with Mortals: The Goddess Athena, Gender, and Power in 5th century Athenian Religion
Adviser: Kenneth Brashier
Sofiya Hyder
Embodied Scripture & Scripted Embodiment: Cross Channels of Practice & Transmission
Adviser: Kristin Scheible
Shea McElroy
Queer Terrorism Is Nonsensical: A Material Analysis of Symbolic Communication about the Orlando Shooting
Adviser: Steven Wasserstrom
Aysha Ann Pettigrew
Forging New American-Muslim Identities after 9/11: Through Islamic Education, Children's Books, and Muslim Women's Online Media
Adviser: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Emily Rose Garcia
Religious Experience Revisited
Adviser: Steven Wasserstrom
Max Taino Hughes Velez
Islamic Art in Museums: Secularism and Epistemological Aporias
Adviser: Kristin Scheible
2015-16
Emily A. Curtis
Krishna on the Tongue: Voicing Tradition, Geographies, and Bodies of Bhakti in Vrindavan, India
Adviser: Prof. Scheible
Briana I. Foley
The Decay of Mud and God: Tactility, Transformation and Divine Absence in a Newar Life-Cycle Ritual in Bhaktapur, Nepal
Adviser: Prof. Scheible
Carolyn L. Foerster
Classics-Religion
Caesar et suos: Charisma, Pietas, and Discipline in the Gallic War
Adviser: Prof. Millender (Fall), Prof. Sabnis (Spring)
Pema McLaughlin
Pointing At the Moon: Categorizing and Creating American Buddhism
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Madison B. Mintz
"Love unknown, why? Why? Why?": Understanding the Screaming Episode in Angela of Foligno's Memorial
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Ali D. Neyzi
Rebellion and Religion: The 1703 Edirne Incident in its Context and the "Religiosities" of Its Actors
Adviser: Brashier
James F. Sissler
Philosophy-Religion
Practice Makes Perfect: Moral Development in Aristotle and Confucius
Adviser: Brashier
2014-15
Su Y. Bang
Classics-Religion
Radical Love: Paul's Epistle to Philemon
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Timothy H. Brandow
The Fool's Hermeneutic: Toward a Trialogic Model of Understanding Authority within the Confines of the Tarot Divination Event
Adviser: Prof. Kory
David C. Grovic-Rauenzahn
The Light of Gnosis, the Prism of Reason, and the Spectrum of Truth: A Dialectical Critique of Jeffrey Kripal's (Post)modern Gnosticism and Pure Rationalism in Religions Studies
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Wyatt R. Heidenfelder
From Religion to "Transreligion"
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Christopher Lu
A Study of Transmedia Types in Academic Forms
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Sienna M. Lyon
Mallikā's Hermeneutics: A Feminist Revalorization of the Jātaka Stories
Adviser: Prof. Scheible
Peter Smith
Muslim Interfaith Marriages in America
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
2013-14
Megan Bradley
Between Oppression and Opposition: the Muslim Brotherhood's Articulation of Islam in Post-revolutionary Egypt
Adviser: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Kirsten Collins
Negotiating Edith Stein: "Bildung" and Identity Politics in the Making of a Modern Saint
Adviser: Steven M. Wasserstrom
Erin M. Guy
Art-Religion
Monstrance in Miniature: The Granville Manuscript's Painted Windows on the Crystal Palace
Advisers: Ken Brashier and William Diebold
Kelly M. Holob
Classics-Religion
Rise and Shine: Contextualizing the Hymns of Synesius of Cyrene
Adviser: Michael E. Foat
Imani E. Jackson
Towards a New Heaven: Reading Black Catholicism in the Work of Sister Thea Bowman
Adviser: Michael E. Foat
Sharon A. Massey
"What the Hell is a Syrian Jew?": Religious Change and Ethnic Persistence in the History of Syrian Jewish Immigrants in New York
Adviser: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Joshua McCarty
Carthusian Desire
Adviser: Michael E. Foat
Zuzu Rebecca Myers
Between Language and Violence: a Dialogue Group's Attempt at Communicating with the Religious Other
Adviser: Michael E. Foat
Louise Webster
Goddesses, Gray Areas, and Cyborgs: the Contemporary Apotheosis of Pele, a Hawaiian Volcano Goddess
Adviser: Stephan N. Kory
2012-13
Melissa Lynn Aslo
The 99: A Study of Religion and Media
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Laila Judith Caron
The World is waiting to Sing the Song of Shabbos: Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and Twentieth Century Jewish Revitalization
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Anna Marilyn Cooper
The Ongoing Conversation: Tradition, Authenticity, and Contemporary Mosque Architecture
Adviser: Jyväsjärvi
Gina Camille Giliberti
Henry Chichele's Corpus: Transi Tombs and the Reconceptualization of the Ecclesiastic Body in 15th Century England
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Aria Ceridwyn Joughin
(Re)Creating God's Story: New Monasticism, Narrative, and the Construction of Religious Identity
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Laura Jeannette Nelson
Classics-Religion
Sensing Divinity: The Dynamics of Sense Perception in Kassia's Troparion for Holy Wednesday
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Claire Lauren Ramey
Through the Veil: The Lord of the Rings as Illuminated by Simone Weil
Adviser: Prof. Jyväsjärvi
Lori Vanessa Rodriguez
Recovering the Feminine Principle: Ecofeminist Spirituality and Gandhian Stayagraha in the Activism of Vandana Shiva
Adviser: Prof. Schofer
Robert Sanderson Shryock
Authenticity in Contemporary Christian Worship Music
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Katherine Eleanor Werner
Bill vs. William: A Story of Bill Wilson, William James and Alcoholics Anonymous
Simone Elise Wood
A Dynamic and Digital Zohar: An Experiment in 3D Textual Environments
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
2011-12
Hannah Catherine Brannan
A Study of the Negotiation of the Islamic Legal Tradition
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Taylor Alexander Colwell
The Drama of Orthodoxy: Father Alexander Schmemann and the limits of religious pluralism within Orthodox Christianity in American
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Kylie Yvonne Gilchrist
Signals Along the Skyline: Minarets in the German Public Sphere
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassisi
Amelia Josephine Goldsmith
Medical Remediation: Buddhist Monasticism and Political Rhetoric in Seventeenth-Century Tibet
Adviser: Prof. Jyväsjärvi
Maria Rachel Hermsen
One Hell of a Problem: An Analysis of the Discourse of Religion vs. Culture in Contemporary American Evangelicalism through the Lens of the Rob Bell Firestorm
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Katherine Elizabeth Lantz
Mahommah Baquaqua and the American Baptist Free Mission Society: A Study of Religious Discourses on Slavery and Individualism in Antebellum America
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Joanna Dorothy Szynal
Gender and Genre in The Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Rachel Elizabeth Waterhouse
Community and God in the Writings of Gustavo Guitérrez and Émile Durkheim
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
2010-11
Audrey June Davidson
Punk Islam? Muslim Punk? Taqwacore as a Multivalent Means through which to Counteract a Monolithic Image of Islam
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Leah Davis Early
Discourse & Deity
Adviser: Prof. Roberts
Kelsey Elizabeth Elving
The Case of Amina Lawal: Women's Rights and Shari'a Implementation in a Post-Colonial Nation State
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Paul David Flanders
Simone Weil and Violent Grace
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Simon Rabin Goldstein
On the Masorah and the Process of Fixity
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Vincent 新澳资料 LaSala
Zhuangzi and His Humor
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Andrew Glen Michaan
Are You There God? It's Me, Zantheos: The Roman Catholic Church and Extraterrestrial Life
Adviser: Prof. Roberts
Simone Ashe Morris
Letters and Dust: The Golem as Physical Manifestation of Righteousness
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Rebecca Anna Shapiro
Eroticism and Death: Micropolitical Rituality in the Body Art of Marina Abramoviç , 1973-1976
Adviser: Prof. Roberts
Hannah Lise Simonson
What does Islamic Art mean for Islam? An examination of word/image in the calligraphic works of Nja Mahdaoui, Mohamed Zakariya, and Kamal Boullata
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Eliot Stanley Stempf
"Truth shall budde out of the earth; and Righteousnesse shall looke downe from Heaven": Lancelot Andrewes, Early Modern Geography, and the Divine Mysteries
Adviser: Prof. Roberts
Maya Miller Wolf
Siddurim and the Cultivation of Klal Yisrael: A Study of Jewish Prayer Book Reform in Contemporary America
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
2009-10
Emma Barnett
Viking Who? A Translation and Analysis of the Chronicle of Roskilde: How the Author Came to Terms with Denmark's Pagan Past
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Emily Kasiana Corso
Opening the Black Box of Jewish Literacy: An Evaluation of the Florence Melton Adult Mini-schools as a Response to the "Crisis of Continuity"
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Kevin William Crooks
Emulating the Sage: the Chinese Islamic Knowledge of Liu Zhi's Tianfang Xingli
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Anna Evans-Goldstein
Secrets from Dead People: Making Science and Religion Compatible in the Face of Death
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
James Gregory Given
Classics-Religion
Anchoring the Areopagite: An Intertextual Approach to Pseudo-Dionysius
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Allison Jones
The Ethical Kosher Pickle: Reading the Discourse of a New Jewish Food Ethic
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Rachel Marie Leaf
Tikkun Olam and Tikkun HaLev: The Messianism of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and the Jewish Renewal Movement
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Paige Merritt
Think Religiously, Act Pragmatically: The Strategic Function of the Interfaith Environmental Movement in America and its Implications for Religion
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Andrew Glen Michaan
Are You There God? It's Me, Zantheos: The Roman Catholic Church and Extraterrestrial Life
Adviser: Prof. Roberts
Joseph Parmalee
Gaining the Whole World: The Consequences of Premillennial Dispensationalism's Emergence into the American Mainstream
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Christopher Timothy Rubio
Verbal Converts and True Believers: The Origins of the Heaven's Gate Suicide Cult
Adviser: Prof. Roberts
Angélique Geneviève Thomas
Martyr Posters and the Construction of Contemporary Palestinian Landscapes and Identities
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Michael Wayne Waldon
Translating the Wordless Transmission: The American Koan
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Katherine C A Walker
Through a Venetian's Eyes: Marco Polo and 13th Century Tengriism
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Andrew Warner
Prophetic Prostheses and the Cybernetic Sublime: A Study of our Transhuman Condition
Adviser: Prof. Roberts
Matthew M Zeltzer
From Syncretism to Signifying: Son House's "Preachin' Blues"
Adviser: Prof. Foat
2008-09
Pooja Bhaskar
Toward Divinity: Muhammad Iqbal’s and ‘Ali Shari‘ati’s Constructions of the Ideal Modern Muslim Self
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Dana Bublitz
Classics-Religion
"Are you there God? It's me, Margaret": A Study of Thomas of Froidmont's "Odoeporicum et Pericula Margaritae Iherosolimitanae"
Adviser: Prof. Sabnis
Lee Lipton
The Problem of Dignity: Exception and the Heterosexual Norm in Conservative Halachah
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Samara Holub-Moorman
Hazrat Inayat Khan and His Metaphysics of Vibration
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Chase Munson
Race, Religion, and Revival: The Story of William J. Seymour
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Margaret Amanda Grove Nelson
Classics-Religion
A Mind Against the Mindless: A Commentary on Gregory of Nazianzus' "First letter to Cledonius"
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Caitlin Rose Oliver
American Civil Religion: Myth, Terror, and Story
Adviser: Prof. Roberts
John Arthur Peetz
Worship the Board, Worship the Lord: Phenomenological Conversion Experience in Skate Ministries
Adviser: Prof. Roberts
Dora Emily Pollack
The Cosmos in Ink: Spirit Resonance and Correlative Realms in Early Chinese Philosophy of Landscape Painting
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Martin M. Souza
Do the Impossible, See the Invisible: Ritual as Self-Cultivation in the "Li Ji"
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Kate Williams
"Dancing for an Audience of One": Megachurches, Ballet, and the Creation of Bodily Religious Identity
Adviser: Prof. Roberts
2007-08
Kristina Marie Clark
Today the Sacrament is LSD: "Start Your Own Religion," Timothy Leary, and the League for Spiritual Discovery
Adviser: Prof. Roberts
Zoë A. Calman
The Place of Ethics: A Critical Reading of Giorgio Agamben's "Remnants of Auschwitz"
Adviser: Prof. Wasserman
John C. Dawson
Gaps in History: Arthur Cohen and American Jewish Theology of History After the Holocaust
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Madeline LeNore Klink
"I Type the Amens and Think the Rest": An Ethnographic Look at Religion in Virtual Reality
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Erin Rose Lenhardt
Flannery O'Connor's Anagogical and the Author, Character, Reader Trialogue
Adviser: Prof. Roberts
Adrienne Julia Mahar
Classics-Religion
Self and Selflessness: Travels With a Handmaid of the Lord
Adviser: Prof. Nicholson
James Meador
Russian-Religion
Moscow Tantric Blues: Bidiya Dandaron's Letters to Nataliya Kovrigina, 1956-1959
Adviser: Prof. Lena Lencek
Laura Platt
Dialogues in Diaspora: The Construction of Jewish Life and Identity at Cedar Sinai Park
Adviser: Prof. Foat
2006-07
Tiffany Lorraine Betts
Transformational Healing: From Experience to Articulation
Advisers: Prof. Brashier & Prof. Wasserstrom
Jane Lindsay Boyle
A Return to Meaning: Spirituality and Historical Tradition at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Vahid J. Brown
Muhammad b. Masarra al-Jabali and His Place in Medieval Islamicate Intellectual History: Towards a Reappraisal
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Mark S Chapman
The Adoption of Buddhist Terminology, Imagery, and Concepts in the Chinese Manichaean Hymnscroll
Advisers: Prof. Brashier & Prof. Wasserman
Benjamin Francis Cordell Colahan
Classics-Religion
The Progress of Procopius: A Martyr’s Byzantine Tale and Its Changing Theology
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Geoffrey Thomas Finger
The Sacralizing Stage: Late Imperial Chinese Ritual Opera, Performative Exorcisms, and </1em>Mulian Rescues His Mother, An Opera for Goodness</1em>
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Michael Yeley Frederick
Quotation Marks and the Study of Hinduism
Adviser: Prof. Roberts
Suzanna Lynn Goldblatt
Condoms and the Catholic Church: Vatican II and AIDS
Adviser: Prof. Roberts and Prof. Foat
Alana Henderson Hein
Reason, Erotic Theurgy, and Divine Humanity: Vladimir Solovyov’s Legitimation of Sophia
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Dana Wiggins Logan
American Studies/Religion
The Greatest Churches Have Yet to Be Organized: Architecture and Religion at the Drive-In Church
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Megan Anne McInerney
After Prophecy: The Prophetic Practice of Wendell Berry
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Marianna Elaine Mullens
“Thugs Turn to Religion:” Signifying Religion within the Nation of Gods and Earths
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Julia Elisabeth Palmer
“Give Yourselves to God”: An Examination of Baptism in the Hutterite Community
Adviser: Prof. Wasserman
Sara Ruth Robberson
Upgrading Religion: A Study of Media Practice at Crossroads Community Church
Advisers: Prof. Wasserman & Prof. Wasserstrom
Daniel James Toman
Wilderness and the Book of Nature: Rewriting the American Environment
Adviser: Prof. Roberts
Miriam Judith Woods
Formation of Religious and National Identities through Pakistani Educational Systems
Adviser: Prof. Wasserman
2005-06
Evan Maxwell Brewer
One Ray of the Sun: The Education and Early Theology of Nikolaj Velimirovic
Adviser: Prof. Noon
Eliza Marie Buhrer
From Theologian to </1em>Physicus</1em>: William of Conches and a Twelfth Century Rift between Theology and Natural Philosophy
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Michael Phillips Casper
Day of the Living Dead: The Spirit Possession Paradigm in Early Modern Yiddish
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Amanda Leigh Cooper
Facing Indra’s Net: A Text-based Analysis of the Case for an Innate Buddhist Environmentalism
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Tristram Coffin Dammin
“Hail to the Chief”: Ideology and Religion
Adviser: Prof. Lofton
Samuel Benjamin Kigar
Islam on the Inside: An Ethnographic Case Study of Muslims in an Oregon Prison
Adviser: Prof. Noon
Margot Pyne Kniffin
Falun Gong and Li Hongzhi’s Mechanized Redemption in the Information Age
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Samantha Rose Lundequam
Hallowed Ground: Arlington National Cemetery, Sacred Space, and American Symbol-Making
Adviser: Prof. Lofton
Miranda Noel Meadow
Rewriting Religion: W. D. Muhammad’s Construction of an African-American Muslim Identity
Adviser: Prof. Noon
Benjamin Paul Murphy
(Re)readings of Paul: The Epistle to the Ephesians and the New Paul Paradigm
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Reanne Theresa O’Sullivan
Woman, the Last Fortress of Every People: The Grail Movement, Feminist Theology, and American Catholicism
Adviser: Prof. Lofton
Jeffrey Wyatt Peterson
The Immortal Discourse: Tracing Ge Hong’s Tradition of Transcendence
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Paul Mark Robertson
Classics-Religion
Didymus the Blind and his Commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Michael Jared Salk
From Spiritual Beings to Counterintuitive Agents: God-Beliefs, Cognitive Science, and the New Naturalism in Religious Studies
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Jeffrey Andrew Wermer
Classics-Religion
ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΥΠΕΡΟΥΣΙΟΥ ΟΥΣΙΩΜΕΝΟΥ Jesus as a Principle of Meditation in the Philosophy of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite
Adviser: Prof. Foat
2004-05
Annette Lynn Cantu
Roman Catholic Identity, Vatican II and the Current ‘Crisis’ of the Catholic Church in the United States
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Roma Giannina Carpenter
The Function of Gravestones Within Catholic Soteriology: Mt. Calvary Catholic Cemetery, 1888-1910
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Jason Denning
Self-educated Buddhism and Alan Watts
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Noah Depper
Blazing Trails on the Steep Pass: A Study of the Progressive Muslim Movement
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Avigail Hurvitz-Prinz
Homemade “Haggadot”: A Study of Contemporary Jewish Ritual Practice and Identity
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Joelle Marr
Immanent Objects: A Study of Buddhist Relics, Icons, and Sutras through the Lens of Ennin's Diary
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Emily B. Miller
The Baby Boom in the Neo-orthodox Nursery: Protestant Education in 1950's America
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Ilana Moll
The "Dao De Jing" and Expression of Interpretation through Translation
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Alexander Landry Neely
Breaking the Maximus Code: A Systematic Exposition of the “Mystagogia”
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Andrea Lynn Neuhoff
The Unedited Thomas Merton: Autobiography to Autohagiography
Adviser: Prof. Foat
James A. Ramos
Reading “Rome and Jerusalem”
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Jeffrey W. Schroeder
Gary Snyder’s Imagined Window on Paleolithic Buddhism
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
2003-04
Philip John Chagoya
The First Principle Aspect: The Operation, Purpose, and Meaning Of Divine Providence in Giambattista Vico’s New Science
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Emily Marie Craven
The Huarochiri Manuscript: Postcolonial Theory in Peru
Adviser: Prof. McCalla
Camille Claire Curry
Zaynab al-Ghazali’s Prison Memoirs: Ethics and Politics through Divine Inscription
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Jasmin Afarin Kahn
Nativism in Scholarship on Early Irish Christianity, with a Case Study of Pelagianism
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Dylan Mark Madenski
Avelokitesvara in a Raincoat: Heart Sutra Interpretation And Ritual Practice in Portland, Oregon
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Kurt Christopher Petschke
Religion and the Picturesque: The Contested Landscape of Hafod, Cardiganshire
Adviser: Prof. McCalla
Megan Clare Price
Walter Wink and the Religion of Nonviolence
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Lincoln Turner Taggart
A Theology of Muslim Nationalism: Muhammad Iqbal and The Pakistan Movement
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
2002-03
Ligaya Ann Beebe
For "You," From "Me": On Constructed Audiences and Identities of Two Taiwan Buddhist Organizations
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Dylan Michael Burns
Hyper-Orphic Myth, The Theurgy of Proclus
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Lauren Elizabeth Frank
The Sharing of Eternal Life: Love and Salvation in Symeon the New Theologian
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Virginia Grace Griffin
Left Behind in America?: Fundamentalism and Popular Culture
Adviser: Prof. McCalla
Brannan Dobbs Ingram
The Ahmadiyya Movement: Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy, and Global Islam
Adviser: Prof. GhaneaBassiri
Jonathan Zachary Nelson
Aberrant Trance States in Buddhist Meditation: A Cognitive View of Mysticism
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Minna Adrienne Scholten
The American Mosque: Representation and the Formation Of American Islamic Identities
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
David Marshall Ward
Inventing Antiquity: The Role of Time-Depth in Creating Religious Significance in Modern Wicca
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
2001-02
Kip Matthew Berman
Over and Out: An Examination of the CCM Cross-over Phenomenon
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Megan Roberta Bongle
What Do you Do with an Apostate Messiah?
Adviser: Prof. Feener
Dustin James Gillham
What She Really Says: Elizabeth Schussler's Fiorenza's Hermenneutics in Context
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Katherine Laura Hug
Orthodoxy versus Heresy: An Essay on the Battle Over The Authority of Interpretation Between Church and the New Prophecy
Adviser: Prof. Feener
Ruchama Jerusha Johnston-Bloom
A Life Lived in Translation: Muhammed Asad Adopts and Adapts Islam
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Michael Belden McAteer
Redefining the Ancient Tribal Ritual for the 21st Century: Goa Gil and the Trance Dance Experience
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Julia V. Meltzer
Tranquility in Turmoil: The </1em>Zhuangzi's</1em> Therapeutic Skepticism
Adviser: Prof. Schmid
Jesse Josef Mischel
Teaching Plainness: The Socialization of Children in an Old Order Mennonite Community
Adviser: Prof. McCalla
Jessica Lynn Stults
Banners of Progress: Spiritualism, Democracy, and Science On the Pacific Coast, 1867-1896
Adviser: Prof. McCalla
Laura Gail Valenti
The Goddess is Alive and Magic is Afoot: An Analysis of Myth and Modern Goddess Worship
Adviser: Prof. Schmid
Elizabeth Rose von Kreisler
Elitism and Esotericism: Allegory in Ibn Tufayl’s </1em>Hayy ibn Yaqzan</1em>
Adviser: Prof. Feener
Jonathan Dean Warren
Vipassana in the Pacific Northwest: Seeking the Moment In a Sea of Metaphors
Adviser: Prof. Schmid
Patricia Ann Williams
Why Canonize John? A Discourse Applying the Praxeology of Bourdieu
Adviser: Prof. Feener
Nicole Larissa Wiswell
Recreation, Race, and Lynchin: Toward a New Theory in The Study of Southern Religion
Adviser: Prof. McCalla
2000-01
Azure Akamay
Thus They Become Wicked Interpreters of Genuine Words: Scripture, Wisdom, and Spirit Second Century Valentinianism
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Jeremy Phillip Brown
The Dimona Dybbuk: Exorcism, Media, and Politics in the 1999 Israeli Elections
Adviser: Prof. Feener
Emily Jane Carter
Compelling God: Mystical Christology in Five of Meister Eckhart's German Sermons
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Erin Elizabeth Dobson
"And on the side of their oppressors there was power": The Nazi State; Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the World Come of Age
Adviser: Prof. McCalla
Lena Elizabeth Eberhart
Tradition Imprisoned: Can Buddhism Support the Rehabilitative Function?
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Luciana Jude Fontanini
The Archangel Michael Who is Holy and his Sidekick, John Who is Small
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Caryn Louise Garner
Catholic Hospitals and Health Care in the United States: The Sanctity of Life and the Sacrifice of Women's Reproductive Rights
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Leah Amelia Halvorson
Forbidden Sects: John Locke, Natural Law, and Religious Toleration
Adviser: Prof. McCalla
David Andrew McDougal
Community Building and Ritualism in the </1em>Han Kitah</1em>: A Study of Chinese Muslim Writers, 1642-1723
Adviser: Prof. Feener
Kimber Ann Nelson
American Buddhist Ritual: A Case Study in Ritualization, Ritual Change, and Ritual Interpretation at a Portland, Oregon Templt
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Whitney Leslie Olson
"Teaching God's People to Win!" : Charismatic Christianity and the Prosperity Movement Within
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Lucas Perkins
When Cowboys Die: Myth and Religion in "Preacher"
A dviser: Prof. Foat
Eliot Shambelan Rasenick
Starhawk and Her Witchy Friends: Finding Unity in Constructivist Analysis
Adviser: Prof. McCalla
Samuel Jordan Schaeffer
"</1em>ER</1em>=Eliade </1em>rex</1em>"?
Adviser: Prof. McCalla
Cecily Frances Whitworth
This Text is Very Useful and Inspiring of Dread: Word, Image and Authority in Hildegard of Bingen's </1em>Liber Scivia</1em>
Adviser: Prof. Foat
1999-2000
Adam Howard Davis
To Apprehend the Still Point: T.S. Eliot and the Via Negativa of the </1em>Four Quartets</1em>
Adviser: Prof. McCalla
J. Clifford Dyer
I Know This Because Tyler Knows This: Relationships of Obedience in the 18th-Century Russian Orthodox Monasticism of Paisy Velychkovsky
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Martha Susan Fletcher
Healing as Performative Ritual in American Pentecostalism
Adviser: Prof. McCalla
Elizabeth Edith Gustafson
Correspondences with the Uncanny: The Shan Hai Jing and Sacred Knowledge in Early Imperial China
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Anmol Avinash Nayvar
(Re)constructing Falun Gong: An Empirical Approach
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Eloise Violet Nelson
Interpreting Jonestown: The Effect of the Media Portrayal of Jonestown on the Academic Study of Religion
Adviser: Prof. McCalla
Michelle Nicole Pallak
"Anguish in the Face of Nothing": Gender and Failure in the Life of the Abbess Thaisia
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Maggie Dara Rosenbloom
Discourse on Desire: Controversy over Spiritual Marriage in Fourth-Century Egyptian Asceticism
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Rebecca Ellen Stewart
Women's Haggadot: Text and Ritual Change in Modern American Judaism
Adviser: Prof. Feener
Sarah Rose Weinman
Secularizing Sabbatianism: The Reconstruction of a Religious Tradition in the Virtual New Age
Adviser: Prof. Feener
1998-99
Thomas Michael Belote
(Dis)establishing Religion: Thomas Jefferson and the (Dis)course of Religious Freedom
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Erica Marie Hagen
The Kalachakra Tantra in the Age of Strife: Modern Tibetan Identity and the Globalization of Ritual
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Kristel Ann Halter
Contextualizing the Spiritual Doctrine of Evagrius of Pontus in Fourth Century Egyptian Monasticism: Determining the Sources of Desert Animosity
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Amy Kathleen Hendrix
The Bride and Her Jewels: the Roman Catholic Church and Religion in Africa
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Nina Lee Johnson
Love Hurts: The Suffering Body in Bonaventure's </1em>Lengenda Maior</1em>
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Julie Kenner
A Poet's Eugenics: Merrill's Sandover as a Third Testament
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Dustin White Latka
Naming and the Return to Unity: Name Magic in the Mao Shan Tradition of Great Purity
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Benjamin Thomas Leech
The Face of the Earth: "Theography" and the drawings of Opicinus de Canistris
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Nathan Dan Newberger
God's Descending in the Clouds (UFOs): Explication of a Modern Taiwanese Sectarian Movement
Adviser: Prof. Brashier
Noah Daniel Salomon
Expanding the Boundaries of Normative Judaism in the Middle Ages: An Historical Study of the Magical Texts from the Cairo Geniza
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Samuel Hargrave Sanford
How David Koresh Controlled His Followers
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Mark Christopher Taylor
Why Become a Nephite? The Book of Mormon and Conversion
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Jeremy Francis Walton
Beyond God (</1em>hypertheos</1em>): Kataphasis, Apophasis, and Hyperphasis in the Works of Pseudo-Dionysus
Adviser: Prof. Foat
1997-98
David Brown Alsdorf
</1em>Perfecting Gratia</1em>: Grace and Perfection in the Later Thought of Saint Augustine
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Bronwyn Boothe Bailey
Living Stones and Speaking Stones: Naim Ateek and Palestinian Theology During the Intifada
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
James Hale Bilbro
ERGI
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Brenda Marisa Cooper
The Forgotten Buddhists: Chinese Women Resisting Acculturation in California 1853-1973
Adviser: Prof. Hsieh
Angela Katherine Eckhardt
From Chaos to Modernity: The Function of Nostalgia in Mircea Eliade's History of the World
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Joshua Jay Elliott
The Development of Hell in Ancient Judaism
Adviser: Prof. Sweek
Robert Law Griffin
Apocalypse Then: A Translation and Explication of the Apocalypse of Shenoute
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Guy Kendall Leavitt
A Translation of the Benedictions of the Abhinava-bharati Composed by the Great Reverend Devotee of Siva Abhinavagupta
Adviser: Prof. Gerow
Norah Amelia Newton
"The Way of Yao and Shun" Chu Hsi's Intellectual Genealogy (Tao-t'ung) As Myth
Adviser: Prof. Hsieh
Elizabeth Louise Nicholson
A Vision of the Great Eastern Sun: "Expedient Means" and Living Eschatology in Chogyam Trungpa's "Shambala Training"
Adviser: Prof. Hsieh
Anne Laura Oravetz
Critiquing Traditions: The Mysticism of Abraham Yagel's Apocalyptic Vision
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Michael McClary Ostling
Sheep and Goats: A Reinterpretation of Religious Tolerance in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania with Remarks on its Relevance
Adviser: Prof. Hsieh
Denise Marie Rhiner
An Additive Synthesis of Jungian and Eliadian Archetypal Theory
Adviser: Prof. Sweek
Waldemar Adrian Schmidt
New Age Religion and the Internet: Computer-Mediated Communications and the Evolution of New Religious Movements
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Andrea Elizabeth Speedie
Homiletic Liturgical and Iconographical Representations of the Mother of God Protectress of Constantinople
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Nicholas Wallace Stevens
Behing Every "Great Beast" is a Great System: Eclecticism and Experience in Aleister Crowley
Adviser: Prof. Sweek
Craig David Suffian
I Am an Ethiopian: A Subjective Biblical History of Rastafari
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Benjamin Waite Taylor
The Religious Music of John Coltrane
Adviser: Prof. Foat
1996-97
James Bellerman
The Challenge of Engagement: Centrality and Expansion in the Theology of Thomas Merton
Adviser: Prof. Hsieh
Mauricio Chernovetzky
Creativity and Creation in Sava de Mishpatim: A Study in Zoharic Hermeneutics
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Peter Kahn
Irreconcilable Principles: An Examination of the Jewish Nationalist Ideologies of Simon Dubnow and Aha Ha'am
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Floyd Bruce Mann
Sympathy for the Devil: Saint Gregory of Nyssa and the Origenist Tradition
Adviser: Prof. Foat
Gabriel Jon Quitslund
Zen Master Dogen and the Tsiao-tung (Soto) Approach to Enlightenment through Seated Meditation and Koan-Study: The Development of "The Koan of Realization" in relation to "Just Sitting"
Adviser: Prof. Hsieh
William Eric Vandever
Transconfessional Neoplatonists in the Fifteenth Century: Plethon, Ficino, Pico, and Cusansus
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
1995-96
Mimi Ann Hannon
Theologies of Darkness: Apophatic Expressions of Piety in Late Antique and Medievel European Mysticism
Adviser: Prof. Denning-Bolle
M. Akira Heshiki
Philo's Mirror: A reflection on Philo of Alexandria's Self-Understanding
Adviser: Prof. Wasserstrom
Justin Otto Sceva
Hey Joe Where Ya Goin With That Wach in Your Hand? Issu