Recent Dissertations

A list of recent dissertations reflects the breadth of research possibilities within the Graduate Program in Religion.

Dissertations completed in the past two years (most recent in each field listed first) include:

HEBREW BIBLE/OLD TESTAMENT

  • Chad Eggleston:
     "'See and Read These Words':  The Concept of the Written in the Book  of Jeremiah. "  11/09/09.
    Advisor: Ellen Davis
  • David Knauert:
    "The Limits of Wisdom and the Dialectic of Desire." 03/31/09.
    Advisor: James Crenshaw
  • Sean Burt:
    "The Contradiction of Genre in the Nehemiah Memorial."  03/26/09.
    Advisor: Eric Meyers
  • Matthew Schlimm:
    "From Fraticide to Forgiveness:  The Ethics of Anger in Genesis." 12/04/08.
    Advisor:  James Crenshaw
  • Amanda Mbuvi:
    “Belonging in Genesis: Biblical Israel and the Construction of Communal Identity.”   06/13/08.
    Advisor: Ellen Davis

NEW TESTAMENT

  • Timothy Wardle:
    "Continuity and Discontinuity:  The Temple and Early Christian Identity."   12/08/08.
    Advisor: Joel Marcus

EARLY CHRISTIANITY

  • Susanna Drake:
    "Sexing the Jew:  Early Christian Constructions of Jewishness."  10/30/08. 
    Advisor:  Elizabeth Clark

AMERICAN RELIGIOUS HISTORY

  • Angela Tarango:
    "Choosing the Jesus Way: The Assemblies of God's Home Missions to American Indians and the Development of a Pentecostal Indian Identity." 08/31/09.
    Advisor: Grant Wacker
  • Elesha Coffman:
    "Constituting the Protestant Mainline:  The Christian Century, 1908-1947. " 10/27/08.
    Advisor: Grant Wacker
  • Adam Zele:
    “John Wesley's America.”  05/02/08.
    Advisor: Richard Heitzenrater
  • Seth Dowland:
    “Defending Manhood: Gender, Social Order, and the Rise of the Christian Right in the South, 1965-1995."  09/07/07.
    Advisor: Grant Wacker

HISTORY OF JUDAISM

  • Chad Spigel:“Quantifying the Liturgical Use of Ancient Synagogues: Occupancy Capacities and Their Implications for the Understanding of Early Judaism.”   07/28/08.
    Advisor: Eric Meyers
  • Seth Klayman:
    “Sukkot from the Tanakh to Tannaitic Texts: Exegetical Traditions, Emergent Rituals, and Eschatological Associations.”  04/29/08.
    Advisor: Eric Meyers

ISLAMIC STUDIES

  • Hina Azam:
    “Sexual Violence in Maliki Legal Ideology: From Discursive Foundations to Classical Articulation.”  01/12/07.
    Advisor: Ebrahim Moosa.


CHRISTIAN THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

  • Brian Bantum:
    Mulatto Theology:  Race, Discipleship, and Interracial Existence." 02/09/09.
    Advisor: Stanley Hauerwas
  • Charlie Collier:
    "A Nonviolent Augustinianism?:  History and Politics in the Theologies of St. Augustine and John Howard Yoder."   12/08/08.
    Advisor: Stanley Hauerwas
  • Jennifer Copeland:
    "Feminine Registers:  The Impact of Women's Voices for Christian Preaching."  12/08/08.
    Advisor: Richard Lischer
  • Daniel Barber:
    “The Production of Immancence: Deleuze, Yoder, and Adorno.” 04/09/08.
    Advisor: Stanley Hauerwas.
  • Dana Dillon:
    “As Soul to Body: The Interior Act of the Will in Thomas Aquinas and in Accounts of Moral Action.”  04/17/08.
    Advisor: Stanley Hauerwas.
  • Edgardo Colón-Emeric:
    “Perfection in Dialogue: An Ecumenical Encounter Between Wesley and Aquinas."   11/13/07.
    Advisor: Reinhard Hütter.

RELIGION AND MODERNITY

  • Bart Scott:
    "Divine Exposures:  Religion and Imposture in Colonial India." 11/17/09.
         Advisor:  Bruce Lawrence
  • David Liu:
    "Affective Metaphysics."  11/19/08.
    Advisor: Kenneth Surin
  • Shannon Hickey:
    “Mind Cure, Meditation, and Medicine: Hidden Histories of Mental Healing in the U.S.”  05/05/08.
    Advisor: Richard Jaffe.