Spring
2003 Newsletter
Department of Religion, UGA
Sonam Kachru, Kate Daley, and Kime Lawson were among the presenters at the March
2003 Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion meeting in Chattanooga,
TN. Graduate Coordinator Carolyn Medine reports the
trio did a superb job in presenting their materials in a concise and interesting
manner.
The Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion is one of ten regional groups
within the American Academy of Religion. The AAR is closely associated with the
Society for Biblical Literature (SBL).
Sonam Kachru presented "Memory and Violence 'Before' the Bhagavad Gita.”
Mr. Kachru is an MA candidate and, as a graduate instructor, taught two sections
of Introduction to the Religions of India, China, and Japan (RELI 1002) for Spring
2003 semester.
Kate Daley presented her paper “Rites of passage and trials of community:
striving to make the ‘just’ man in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Also an MA Candidate, Ms. Daley taught Introduction to Judaism, Christianity and
Islam (RELI 1001) for Spring 2003 as a graduate instructor.
Religion instructor J. Kime Lawson presented "Sour Grapes and Soren's Teeth:
Kierkegaard and the Binding of Isaac Revisited." For Spring 2003 he taught
three sections of Introduction to Judaism, Christianity and Islam (RELI 1001).
Mr. Lawson received his UGA Master’s degree in Religion in 2002.
Religion graduate student Allison Bramblett presided at the “Religion
and Pedagogy: Teaching Religion and Culture” panel of the March 2003 meeting
of the Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion. Also in March Ms.
Bramblett attended a graduate student conference, “Strangers in a Strange
Land,” at the University of Minnesota. While there she presented her paper
entitled “And so I sought refuge in the German language: Middle and Near
Eastern writers of German literature, the first generation.”
Assistant Professor Kenneth Honerkamp’s Three Early Sufi Texts
has been accepted by Vons Vitae Publishers. The works were translated in collaboration
with Nicholas Heer. At UGA he received the teaching award of the Student Government
Association as an educator who made a difference in students’ lives.
Dr. Honerkamp is working with Ahyaf Sinno, vice-rector of the University of Saint
Joseph, Lebanon, on final editing of The Greater Collection of Letters by Ibn
Abbad (d.1390). Professor Honerkamp has edited and made a comparative study with
four other texts of a14th century treatise on The Life of Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili
(1258) from a previously unpublished work by Abd el-Nur al-Imrani of Fes Morocco
(d.1287). He is also participating in the restoration of the tomb complex of Ibn
Abbad in Fes, Morocco with a group of Moroccan scholars and the Moroccan government.
Dr. Honerkamp delivered an invited lecture: “Mohammad as Exemplar for the
Muslim Community Today,” sponsored by the ISRA Islamic Research Association,
in Columbia SC. In February he served on a panel with the Globalization and Change
in Central Asia international symposium sponsored by UGA CHA. In April he delivered
two lectures at an international conference in Alexandria, Egypt. The conference,
The Sufi Path of the Shadhiliyya: A Spiritual School of the Islamic World , was
sponsored by Centre d’Etudes Alexandrines and UNESCO.
Professor Sandy D. Martin presided for a session at the regional American Academy
of Religion meeting in Chattanooga, TN and he continues to chair the African American
Religion Section of that group. He has published a combined review of two
books in The Journal of the American Academy of Religion 71 (March 2003): 187-91.
And, in September 2003, he is invited to participate in the Second Baptist Classics
Seminar at Mercer University.
Dr. Martin received a 2003 Senior Faculty Research Grant and a 2003-2004 CHA Research
Fellowship in support of a project to collect for publication the papers of James
Walker Hood (1831-1918) and other leaders of the AME Zion Church during the years
1860-1920.
Associate Professor Alan Godlas was a traveling speaker to Kano, Nigeria January
2003 via a grant from the U.S. Department of State Office of International Information
Programs (IIP). He delivered two lectures “American Views of Islam in
the US” and “American Views of Islam in Nigeria” at the conference
Engaging Islam: A Political-Economic Dialogue Between the U.S. and Northern Nigerian
Leaders. In November 2002, he also received an IIP grant to deliver the lecture
“Islam in the US,” via live digital video feed to the U.S. embassy in
Dakar, Senegal.
In February 2003 he was a moderator at the Globalization and Change in Central
Asia UGA conference and was a judge for a UGA student debate “Islam: political
or religious movement in Central Asia.” Dr. Godlas also received a grant
from President Michael Adams’ Venture Fund for graduate student assistance
for Islam and Islamic Studies web site projects, including the construction of
the UGA Virtual Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of the Islamic World (VCISIW).
Dr. Godlas became an affiliated faculty member of the Islam and Human Rights Fellowship
Program at Emory University School of Law. He continues as a member of the Steering
Committee, Study of Islam section, AAR.
Assistant Professor Glenn Wallis is working on an annotated translation (from
the Pali language) of the third century B.C.E. Buddhist verse text known as the
Dhammapada. His book, entitled Verses on the Way: the Buddhist Dhammapada,
will be published by Random House in early 2004. Dr. Wallis has three articles
in press for the encyclopedia Holy People of the World (ABC-CLIO Publications,
forthcoming). His articles are on the group of medieval Indian Buddhist figures
known as the Mahasiddhas, as well as the teacher Tilopa, and the visionary protagonist
of the Gandavyuha, Sudhana. Wallis’ article “Advayavajra’s Instructions
on the adikarma” is presently under review at the Journal of the American
Oriental Society. An abbreviated form of this article has been accepted for presentation
at the upcoming AOS conference under the title “Adikarma as ‘primary
practice.’”
Associate Professor Russell Kirkland’s recent publications include “Self-Fulfillment
through Selflessness: The Moral Teachings of the Daode jing,” in Michael
Barnhart, ed., Varieties of Ethical Reflection: New Directions for Ethics in a
Global Context (New York: Lexington Books [Rowman and Littlefield]); a review-essay
on Wm. deBary’s revised edition of Sources of Chinese Tradition, in Education
About Asia; and a review-essay on J. J. Clarke’s The Tao of the West, in
Religious Studies Review. He also refereed book manuscripts for Stanford University
Press, the University of Hawai’i Press, and Prentice-Hall, as well as an
article for Philosophy East and West. At UGA, he was recently named to the Central
Asian Studies Group.
Oxford University Press has contracted Teaching African American Religion,
a book Associate Professor Carolyn Medine is co-editing with Theodore Trost.
Dr. Medine has an article coming out — "Imagining Louisiana Religion:
Eve's Bayou and Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January Novels" — in Corrie
Norman and Don S. Armentrout’s Religion in the South: Today from Yesterday
to Tomorrow (forthcoming, University of Tennessee Press). Dr. Medine’s happy
to report her continued work for the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in
Religion and Theology. She is a staff person for two Wabash workshops, one for
pre-tenure African American faculty (2002-2003) and one for pre-tenure undergraduate
professors (2003-2004). At UGA she was named an affiliate member of the UGA Women's
Studies Program and has served on its curriculum committee.
In February 2003, Associate Professor Thomas B. Slater was the Jackson Lecturer
for Ministers’ Week at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School.
The three-day conference for Perkins alumni involves lecturers and workshop
leaders on a variety of topics of contemporary interest. He presented his lecture,
"Context, Christology and Civil Disobedience in the Book of Revelation,"
plus a workshop.
The UGA Center for Humanities & Arts awarded Dr. Slater a grant to work on
his commentary on 1, 2, and 3 John. He also has received Visiting Fellow status
in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University. Dr. Slater recently published
an article, "On Translating Jeremiah 30.18b" in Technical Papers for
the Bible Translator (54:1; January 2003, pp. 135-37), an international journal
that addresses issues relating to translating the Bible. He has also received
encouraging news from Oxford University Press concerning a book proposal.
Please Designate
Religion
A very small
Development fund exists for our department. We need your tax deductible UGA donation,
designated for Religion department, to make it grow. Mail your designated contribution
to: UGA Foundation, Foundation Building, Gift Receiving Department, 824 South
Milledge Ave, Athens, GA 30602. To donate by credit card online, go to www.alumni.uga.edu/gafund/Gift.html
then click online gift by credit card and select Franklin College Arts & Sciences
and Religion for Academic unit and Department. Please contact the Franklin College
Development office at (706) 542-1168 for additional information.
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