Helene Sinnreich becomes new Director of Judaic Studies.

October 5, 2023 by religionweb

Helene Sinnreich

Dr. Sinnreich joined the Religious Studies Department in Fall of 2016 as an Associate Professor and Director of the Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies.  She is a scholar of Jewish experience during the Holocaust and European Jewry.  Dr. Sinnreich serves as the editor in chief of the Journal of Jewish Identities (Johns Hopkins University Press).   Dr. Sinnreich’s main research focus is on the experience of Jews in Nazi ghettos.  She has a special focus on the Lodz and Krakow ghettos and recently published, A Story of Survival: The Lodz Ghetto Diary of Heinek Fogel (Yad Vashem Press, 2015).

Dr. Sinnreich comes to the University of Tennessee from having served as Director of the Center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies at Youngstown State University since 2005.  She has also served as a fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. in 2007 and at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in 2009.  Dr. Sinnreich received her Ph.D. in 2004 from Brandeis University and her BA in 1997 from Smith College. 

Dr. Sinnreich’s most well-known research is on sexual abuse of Jewish women during the Holocaust.  This work appeared first as an article “And it was Something we Didn’t Talk About…” The Rape of Jewish Women During the Holocaust” Holocaust Studies (December, 2008).  It has been recognized as some of the most important scholarship on the Holocaust in the past decade, has been featured on CNN.com (it was a front page story) and served as part of the inspiration for Gloria Steinem to start the Women under Siege Project, which investigates rape and genocide. (http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/author/profile/gloria-steinem) Dr. Sinnreich is working on several projects at the moment.  She will be presenting a paper at the upcoming Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies meeting this fall on Hunger in the ghettos which expands on her research on human-made famine in the Lodz Ghetto and looks at hunger across all the ghettos of Nazi occupied Europe.  This work will also be appearing as a book chapter in The Ghetto in Global History, 1500 to the Present eds. Wendy Z. Goldman and Joe W. Trotter (Routledge, forthcoming).  Dr. Sinnreich is also beginning a new book project, Who will Live and Who Will Die?: Rosh Hashanah at Auschwitz in 1944 which examines two “selections” carried out by Joseph Mengele during the fall of 1944 at Auschwitz.  It will be a continuation of her research into factors of survival during the Holocaust.  In addition to her traditional scholarship, Dr. Sinnreich has produced a number of pieces of public scholarship including multiple exhibitions and serving as the consulting scholar of a number of documentary films.

Megan Bryson brings expertise on the religions of China

October 4, 2023 by religionweb

Megan Bryson

As of Fall 2013, Dr. Megan Bryson is a new Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions in the Department of Religious Studies, but she isn’t new to UT or Knoxville. She arrived in 2010, after many years spent in her native Oregon and then in California, where she earned her PhD from the Buddhist Studies Program of Stanford University’s Department of Religious Studies. In her three years as a lecturer, Dr. Bryson has already accomplished much. She curated the award-winning exhibit “Zen Buddhism and the Arts of Japan” at the McClung Museum and in 2013, she won a prestigious Alumni Outstanding Teacher Award. As an Assistant Professor, she regularly teaches courses on East Asian religions, including “Religions of China,” “Religions of Japan,” and “Zen Buddhism.”

Dr. Bryson’s research focuses on Buddhism in Southwest China, specifically in the Dali region of Yunnan Province, an area with a large ethnic minority population, where she conducted fieldwork between 2006-2009. She is completing a book, The Boundaries of Chinese Religion, that uses Dali as a case study to examine the role religion has played in representing Chinese identity from the twelfth century to the present. Dali has been neglected in studies of Chinese religion because it is not seen as “Chinese.” In her manuscript, Dr. Bryson argues that Dali’s religious traditions come primarily from Chinese territory, which reveals the limitations of the black-and-white terms “Chinese” and “non-Chinese.” Her other research projects focus primarily on the Dali kingdom’s distinctive Buddhist traditions, particularly texts and artworks that have not been found anywhere else. She has also written articles about ethnicity, gender, and Dali religion for journals such as Asian Ethnology, Signs, and the Journal of International Association of Buddhist Studies. Dr. Bryson plans to return to Dali soon to begin research on new projects.

In the 2013-14 year, Dr. Bryson has presented (or will soon present) her research at several national and international conferences, including in Belgium, Japan, Israel, and Germany. As much as Dr. Bryson enjoys this global travel and exchanging ideas with international scholars, she always looks forward to returning to her new home in Knoxville. She especially loves the outdoor recreation here: she frequently hikes in the Smokies and has completed the Knoxville Marathon twice.

Manuela Ceballos brings expertise as an Islamic Studies specialist.

October 4, 2023 by religionweb

Manuela Ceballos

Manuela Ceballos was born and raised in Medellín, Colombia. In the 2014-2015 academic year, she joined the faculty in the department of Religious Studies as an Islamic Studies specialist. Manuela comes to the University of Tennessee from Emory University’s Graduate Division of Religion via the American Southwest, where she has spent the last few years while writing her dissertation. She has also lived abroad in Morocco and France. During the Fall of 2014, Manuela has been teaching a course entitled “Classical Islam” and a seminar on Sufism (Islamic mysticism). In the Spring semester, she will teach a class on Jewish-Muslim-Christian interactions in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, and another course on modern Islam.

Manuela’s research brings together literary sources in Arabic and Spanish from the Early Modern period that deal with Muslim-Christian encounters in the shifting geographical and communal boundaries that eventually led to the contemporary notions of nationhood and nationality in the Morocco and Spain. Her current project, ‘The Favor of Good Companions:’ Violence and the Formation of Religious Communities in Early Modern Iberia and North Africa, focuses on the role of violence in the formation of religious and political communities as represented in Islamic and Christian mystical texts from the Western Mediterranean. She is also engaged in further research on Islamic notions asylum and hospitality in the context of the mass forced migration that resulted from the so-called Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula. Her article on the writings of the fifteenth-century Sufi reformer and fighter Muhammad ibn Yaggabsh al-Tāzī is forthcoming in the Journal of Religion and Violence.  She plans to return to North Africa to continue her research. In December, she will be presenting her work in Alexandria, Egypt.

Manuela is happy to be back in the Southeast and to live close to the mountains. In her free time, she practices Arabic calligraphy and enjoys the company of her family and friends, as well as that of her two very patient cats and lively border-collie mix.

From gender, the body, and violence in early Christian literature to religion and film, Jenny Collins-Elliott has diverse interests.

October 2, 2023 by religionweb

Jennifer Collins-Elliott

Jennifer Collins-Elliott joined the Religious Studies Department as a part-time lecturer in fall of 2014. She specializes in early Christianity, with a focus on gender, the body, and violence in early Christian literature. She received her BA in Religious Studies from the University of Kansas and her MA in Religion from Florida State University, where she is also pursuing her doctoral work.

Jenny is currently working on her dissertation entitled “‘Bespattered with the Mud of Another’s Lust’: Rape and Physical Embodiment in Christian Literature of the 4th-6th Centuries CE.” This project explores the ways that sexual violence is described and deployed in a variety of early Christian texts. Focusing on the writings of select Church leaders and stories of martyrs, this dissertation demonstrates that responses to rape reveal how these authors imaged the relationship between the body and chastity and how this concept changes over time, moving toward a more dominantly body-centric model of sexual purity. Jenny’s research has been furthered by her recent participation in a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute on “Diverse Philosophical Approaches to Sexual Violence” at Elon University. She has also presented her work nationally at the annual Society of Biblical Literatures conference and the North American Patristics conference, as well as internationally at the International Patristics conference at Oxford.

In her time at the University of Tennessee, Jenny has taught a variety of courses, including an honors section of World Religions in History; Introduction to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; and Gender and Religion. Starting in 2016, Jenny has developed a Comparison of World Religions class that focuses on world religions and film. This class encourages students to think critically about the ways in which film displays and creates religion and religious discourses in both American and international contexts. This course has also provided an opportunity for Jenny to further her interest in representations of religion in media as well as her interest in critical approaches to the academic study of religion. Coming from the Midwest, Jenny is enjoying Knoxville’s mountainous landscape and learning about Appalachia’s history, food, and language.

From TX to TN, new lecturer David Kline brings expertise on race and US religion

October 1, 2023 by religionweb

David Kline

Dr. David Kline joined the Religious Studies Department as a full-time lecturer in Religion, Race, and Ethnicity in the Americas in fall of 2017. His academic specialties are religion and race in the Americas, critical race theory, and political theology. He holds a Bachelor of Music Education from the University of Texas at Austin, and Master’s degrees in Theology and Religion from St. Andrews University (M.Litt.), Duke University (M.Div.), and Rice University (MA). In August of 2017 he received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Rice University under the supervision of Anthony B. Pinn. 

Dr. Kline is currently turning his dissertation, which was defended with distinction in July 2017, into manuscript form. The project, titled The Apparatus of Christian Identity: Religious (Auto)Immunity, Political Theology, and the Making of the Racial World, provides a critical analysis of western Christian racism and violence as reactionary responses to the perpetual inescapability of social, political, and cultural transformation. Dr. Kline is also the co-author (with CERCL Writing Collective at Rice University) of the book Embodiment and Black Religion: Rethinking the Body in African American Religious Experience (Equinox Press, 2017), which explores the centrality of the body in African American religious experience. In addition, he is also undertaking a research project aimed at producing a book length introductory study of Caribbean theorist Sylvia Wynter from a religious studies perspective. Exploring Wynter’s vast critical explorations of what she calls the modern colonial west’s “monohumanist” figure of “Man,” this project will provide detailed overviews and engagements of Wynter’s use of history, science, philosophy of religion, literature, systems theory, and black studies.

Over the last year, Dr. Kline has enjoyed teaching courses in comparative American religion and race/ethnicity at the University of Tennessee. These include Christianity, Race, and Science; Religion, Theology, and Social Movements in North America; and American Religious History. As a humanities teacher at a public university, these courses have provided wonderful environments through which to explore how complex histories, identity formations, and structures of power really do matter to the lives of students—both as individuals and as citizens within a democracy. On top of teaching, Dr. Kline has also coordinated and produced a podcast interview series titled “UTK Religion Podcast” for visiting speakers at the religious studies department at the University of Tennessee.

Born and raised in Houston, TX, Dr. Kline is an avid Houston Astros baseball fan, realizing a lifelong dream when they won the World Series in 2017. He is also a musician, and was a professional working bass player in Austin, Texas for many years before pursuing graduate training in religious studies. He is delighted to be in Knoxville, and enjoys being close to the Great Smoky Mountains and experiencing four distinct seasons.