Graduate Student Placement

2019

Rex Delno Barnes III, PhD
Teaching Faculty
St. Mark's School, Southborough, MA
Dissertation: Haunting Matters: Demonic Infestation in Northern Europe, 1400-1600

Andrew Macomber, PhD
Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions
Departments of Religion and East Asian Studies, Oberlin College
Dissertation Title: Esoteric Moxibustion for Demonic Disease: Efficacy and Ritual Healing in Medieval Japanese Buddhism

Elizabeth Tinsley, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of East Asian Studies, University of California, Irvine
Dissertation Title: Dharma Possession: Daishi Myōjin and the Roles of Gods and Past Masters in the Preservation of Teachings at Premodern Kōyasan

2018

Krista Dalton, PhD
Assistant Professor of Judaic Traditions 
Religion Department, Kenyon College
Dissertation: Rabbis and Donors: On the Logics of Giving in the Ancient Mediterranean

Cara Rock-Singer, PhD
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
University of Wisconsin
Dissertation Title: Prophetesses of the Body: American Jewish Feminism and the Politics of Embodied Knowledge 

Shana Sippy, PhD
Research Associate in Religion
Centre College
Dissertation Title: Diasporic Desires: Making Hindus and the Cultivation of Longing 

Zachary Ugolnik, PhD
Program Director at Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
Stanford University
Dissertation: The Mirror of Glory: Sense and Subjectivity in Near Eastern Mysticism

2017

Hasan Azad, PhD
Graduate Student
Master of Divinity Program, Union Theological Seminary
Dissertation: (Im)Possible Muslims: Hizb Ut-Tahrir, The Islamic State and Modern Muslimness 

Daniel Manfred del Nido, PhD
Senior Education Program Associate
Tanenbaum
Dissertation: Just like Nature: Habit and the Art of Life

Laura McTighe, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Religion, Florida State University
Dissertation Title: 'This Day, We Use Our Energy for Revolution': Black Feminist Ethics of Survival, Struggle, and Renewal in the New New Orleans 

2016

Sajida Jalalzai, PhD
Assistant Professor
Trinity University
Dissertation: Translating Islamic Authority: Chaplaincy and Muslim Leadership Education in North American Protestant Seminaries 

Simran Singh, PhD
Executive Director of the Religion & Society Program, The Aspen Institute
Senior Adviser, Equity and Inclusion, YSC Consulting
Dissertation: The Life of the Puratan Janamsakhi: Tracing the Earliest Memories of Guru Nanak 

Michael Wolfe, PhD
Tutor (Tenured Faculty)
St. John's College, Santa Fe
Dissertation: The World Could Not Contain the Pages: A Sufi Reading of the Gospel of John Based on the Writings of Muhyi Al-Din Ibn Al-'Arabi (1165- 1240 Ce)

2015

Joseph Blankholm, PhD
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara
Dissertation: Making the American Secular: An Ethnographic Study of Organized Nonbelievers and Secular Activists in the United States 

Joel Bordeaux, PhD
Lecturer in the Institute for Area Studies
South Asian Religions, Leiden University
Dissertation: The Mythic King: Raja Krishnacandra and Early Modern Bengal

Liane Carlson, PhD
Manager, Institutional Funding and Sponsored Research 
Barnard College
Dissertation: Contingency and the Limits of History: How Touch Shapes Experience and Meaning

Andrea Castiglioni, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
University of California, Berkeley
Dissertation: Ascesis and Devotion: The Mount Yudono Cult in Early Modern Japan

Christopher Kelley, PhD
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Brooklyn College and New York University
Dissertation: Toward a Buddhist Philosophy and Practice of Human Rights 

Matthew Pereira, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University
Dissertation:  Reception, Interpretation, and Doctrine in the Sixth Century: John Maxentius and the Scythian Monks 

Drew Thomases, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Religious Studies, San Diego State University
Dissertation: Making Pushkar Paradise: Religion, Tourism, and Belonging in a North Indian Pilgrimage Town 

Anand Venkatkrishnan, PhD
Assistant Professor
Divinity School, University of Chicago
Dissertation: Mimamsa, Vedanta, and the Bhakti Movement 

2014

Ari Bergmann, PhD
Managing Principal
Penso Advisors, LLC
Dissertation: Halevy, Halivni, and the Oral Formation of the Babylonian Talmud 

Yonatan Brafman, PhD
Assistant Professor, Religion
Tufts University
Dissertation: Critical Philosophy of Halakha (Jewish Law): The Justification of Halakhic Norms and Authority 

Todd French, PhD
Assistant Professor of History of Christianity
Rollins College
Dissertation:  Just Deserts: Losing Origen and Gaining Retributive Judgment in the Hagiographical Literature of the Early Byzantine World 

Elana Stein, PhD
Director of Leadership Education
Shalom Hartman Institute of North America
Dissertation: Rabbinic Legal Loopholes: Formalism, Equity, and Subjectivity 

Hsuan-Li Wang, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
National Taiwan University
Dissertation: Gushan: The Formation of a Chan Lineage During the Seventeenth Century and its Spread to Taiwan 

2013

Susan Andrews, PhD
Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions
Mount Allison University
Dissertation: Representing Mount Wutai's Past: A Study of Chinese and Japanese Miracle Tales about the Five Terrace Mountain 

Todd Berzon, PhD
Peter M. Small Associate Professor of Religion, Religious Studies
Bowdoin College
Dissertation: Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Discovery, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity 

Joshua Eisen, PhD
President
Tekademic Translation Services
Dissertation: Stammaitic Activity Versus Stammaitic Chronology: Anonymity's Impact on the Legal Narrative of the Babylonian Talmud 

Benjamin Fong, PhD
Assistant Professor of Honors
Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University
Dissertation: The Death Drive Revisited: A Reexamination of Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and Its Implications for Critical Theory 

Joseph McClellan, PhD
Assistant Professor
Asian University for Women
Dissertation: Poisoned Ground: The Roots of Eurocentrism: Teleology, Hierarchy, and Anthropocentrism 

Heather Ohaneson, PhD
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
William Penn Honors Program, George Fox University
Dissertation: Free To Play: An Analysis in Aesthetic, Ethical, and Religious Movements 

Gregory Scott, PhD
Senior Lecturer in Chinese Cultural History
University of Manchester
Dissertation: Conversion by the Book: Buddhist Print Culture in Early Republican China 

Frank Shepard, PhD
Associate Faculty
Brooklyn Institute for Social Research
Director of Development
Arch Digitals
Dissertation: The Sickness unto Life: Nietzsche's Diagnosis of the Christian Condition 

Michelle Sorensen, PhD
Assistant Professor of Religion
Western Carolina University
Dissertation: Making the Old New Again and Again: Legitimation and Innovation in the Tibetan Buddhist Chod Tradition 

Hamsa Stainton, PhD
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
McGill University
Dissertation: Poetry and Prayer: Stotras in the Religious and Literary History of Kashmir  

Gheorghita Zugravu, PhD
Priest
St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral
Dissertation: Kassia the Melodist and the Making of a Byzantine Hymnographer 

2012

Patton Burchett, PhD
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
College of William and Mary
Dissertation: Bhakti Religion and Tantric Magic in Mughal India: Kacchvahas, Ramamandis, and Naths, Circa 1500-1750 

Ehud Halperin, PhD
Lecturer
Asian Studies, Tel Aviv University
Dissertation: Hadimba Becoming Herself: A Himalayan Goddess in Change 

Abigail Kluchin, PhD
Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Ursinus College
Dissertation: The Allure of Affect: Rigor, Style, and Unintelligibility in Kristeva and Irigaray 

Daniel Vaca, PhD
Robert Gale Noyes Assistant Professor of Humanities
Brown University
Dissertation: Book People: Evangelical Books and the Making of Contemporary Evangelicalism

2011

Mimi Hanaoka, PhD
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies in Islam
University of Richmond
Dissertation: Umma and Identity in Early Islamic Persia 

James Hare, PhD
Project Manager
Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung
Dissertation: The Garland of Devotees: Nabhadas' Bhaktamal and Modern Hinduism 

Jon Keune, PhD
Assistant Professor
South Asian Religions, Michigan State University
Dissertation: Conversion by the Book: Buddhist Print Culture in Early Republican China 

David Kittay, PhD
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Department of Religion, Columbia University
Partner
Kittay & Gershfeld, P.C.
Dissertation: Interpreting the Vajra Rosary: Truth and Method Meets Wisdom and Method 

Yung-Fen Ma, PhD
Buddhist Nun and Abbess
Buddhist Center, Philippines
Dissertation: The Revival of Tiantai Buddhism in the Late Ming: On the Thought of Youxi Chuandeng (1544-1628) 

Roy Tzohar, PhD
Tenured Faculty
East Asian Studies, Tel Aviv University
Dissertation: Metaphor (Upacara) in Early Yogacara Thought and Its Intellectual Context 

2010

Jared Calaway, PhD
Visiting Assistant Professor
Religion Department, Illinois Wesleyan University
Dissertation: Heavenly Sabbath, Heavenly Sanctuary: The Transformation of Priestly Sacred Space and Sacred Time in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and the Epistle to the Hebrews 

Rosemary Corbett (Hicks), PhD
Faculty
Bard Prison Initiative
Dissertation: Creating an 'Abrahamic' America and Moderating Islam: Cold War Political Economy and Cosmopolitan Sufi Muslims in New York After 2001 

Erika Dyson, PhD
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Harvey Mudd College
Dissertation: Spiritualism and Crime: Negotiating Prophecy and Police Power at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 

2009

Varuni Bhatia, PhD
Core Faculty, History and Humanities
Azim Premji University, Bengaluru
Dissertation: Devotional Traditions and National Culture: Recovering Gaudiya Vaishnavism in Colonial Bengal 

John Campbell, PhD
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Dissertation: Vajra Hermeneutics: A Study of Vajrayana Scholasticism in the Pradipoddyotana 

Wen-Ling Jane, PhD
Buddhist Nun
Buddhist College of Zhongtai Mountain
Dissertation: Practice and Theory of Emptiness: A Study of Jizang's Commentary on the "Refutation of Emptiness" of the Bailun 

Annabella Pitkin, PhD
Assistant Professor of Buddhism/East Asian Religions
Lehigh University
Dissertation: Like Pouring Water into Water: Buddhist Lineages, Modernity, and the Continuity of Memory in the Twentieth-Century History of Tibetan Buddhism 

2008

Andrea Pinkney, PhD
Associate Professor of South Asian Religions
McGill University
Dissertation: The Sacred Share: Prasada in South Asia