New Graduate Track in Asian Religions at Duke University

The Graduate Program in Religion at Duke University announces the creation of a new graduate track in Asian religions. Students may apply for the Asian religions track beginning in the 2006-2007 academic year for matriculation at Duke in Fall 2007.

The new track expands the offerings of the Graduate Program in Religion into an area of growing strength at Duke University, which is designated a Title VI National Resource Center for both Global East Asian and South Asian studies. The Department of Religion now has five Asianists on its faculty. We particularly encourage students with interests aligned with those of these faculty members to apply to the program.

•  Richard M. Jaffe , a specialist in early modern and modern Japanese religion, particularly Buddhism in Japan and its diaspora

•  Bruce Lawrence , whose work centers on South Asian Islam as well as other religious traditions in the subcontinent and also comparative studies of contemporary Islamic movements

•  Ebrahim Moosa , whose research topics include comparative Islamic ethics and laws, with special attention to South Asian perspectives on these topics, as well as Islamic education in the subcontinent

•  Peter Nickerson , a specialist in Daoism and popular religions in ancient/medieval China and in contemporary Chinese societies

•  Leela Prasad , whose research concerns ethics and contemporary Indian religions in South Asia and its diaspora, folklore studies, ethnography, gender, and narrative

Duke Asian studies faculty members in such fields as Anthropology, Art History, Asian and African Languages and Literatures, HIstory, and Sociology, enright the offerings available to graduate students in Religion. (For more information see the Asian-Pacific Studies Institute and the NC Center for South Asian Studies websites.) Duke's programs in Asian studies focus on the early modern and modern eras, areas of primary interest for the Asian religions faculty members as well. Students with interests in these periods or in the study of Asian religions in diaspora (for example, Buddhism or Hinduism in the United States) are strongly encouraged to apply to the new program.

Faculty members and students in Asian religions and Asian studies at Duke also work closely with faculty members at the nearby University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which, like Duke, has a growing number of faculty members specializing in Asian religion and Asian studies. Students in the Duke program are encouraged to enroll in appropriate graduate courses at UNC-CH, and UNC-CH faculty members may serve on examination and dissertation committees for Duke graduate students. (For more information see the UNC-CH Department of Asian Studies and the Department of Religious Studies, UNC-CH website). In addition, there is significant cooperation with the Asian studies faculty members at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. The combined programs thus offer students of Asian religions an extremely rich selection of faculty members, courses, and research opportunities.