Helene Sinnreich becomes new Director of Judaic Studies.

October 5, 2023 by newframe

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 newframe

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 newframe

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 newframe

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 newframe

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.

Megan Bryson Published in The Conversation

May 1, 2023 by newframe

Happy birthday, Buddha! Why the founder of Buddhism has so many different birthdays around the world

A devotee bathes a Buddha statue during celebrations of the Buddha’s birthday in Malaysia. Wong Fok Loy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Megan Bryson, University of Tennessee

When Siddhartha Gautama was born, he was clearly no ordinary infant. According to Buddhist texts, he raised his hand to the skies and declared, “In the heavens above and below the heavens, I am the world’s most honored one. I will free all beings from birth, old age, sickness, and death.”

Then the remarkable baby is believed to have received a first bath: streams of water poured by the gods Brahma and Indra – or flowing from two dragon kings’ mouths, depending on the legend. This cleansing consecrated the Buddha-to-be as holy, signaling that even the gods recognized him as worthy of veneration.

Buddhists believe that several “buddhas,” or enlightened teachers, have been born throughout history. Yet the title “the Buddha” typically refers to this historical figure, Siddhartha Gautama, who went on to found Buddhism. Each year on the Buddha’s birthday, East Asian Buddhists recreate his first bath by pouring water or sweetened tea over a statue of the infant.

The holiday has been observed in different parts of Asia for hundreds of years, but its significance varied by region. In Sri Lanka, for example, it was a religious day simply celebrated at temples, not a public celebration. In Korea, on the other hand, the Buddha’s birthday became a more commercial festival under the Choson dynasty, which frowned upon Buddhist religious practices and ended in 1910.

Buddhist reformers in the 19th and 20th centuries, however, deliberately emphasized the Buddha’s birthday in their efforts to unite Buddhist populations across countries and protect traditions from Christian missionaries. In the late 1800s, Sri Lankans successfully petitioned the British colonial government to allow celebrations for the Buddha’s birthday, which they deliberately modeled on Christmas – a model that caught on around Asia.

These efforts helped the Buddha’s birthday become a major global holiday, but celebrations still take place on different dates and with different traditions. As a scholar of Buddhism who studies the religion’s transmission from India to China, I am keenly aware of how people adapt practices and ideas to their own cultures.

One Buddha, many dates

In South Asia and Southeast Asia, the Buddha’s birthday is celebrated on the full moon of the second lunar month, known as Vesākha or Vaiśākha. In Sanskrit, a full moon is “Pūrṇimā,” which is why the holiday is often called Buddha Pūrṇimā, Vesak or Wesak.

Vaiśākha corresponds to April and May of the Gregorian calendar, so in 2023, people in countries like Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos and Burma celebrated the Buddha’s birthday on the full moon of May 5.

Two monks in dark red and bright orange robes carefully handle a large gold statue of a seated Buddha. — Buddhist monks in Kolkata, India, prepare a statue of the Buddha during the Buddha Pūrṇimā festival. Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Buddhists in East Asia, however, mark the Buddha’s birthday on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month – and follow a different lunisolar calendar, too. In China, Vietnam and Korea, Buddha’s birthday will be celebrated in 2023 on May 26.

But there are even more variations. The Taiwanese government decided in 1999 to celebrate the Buddha’s birthday jointly with Mother’s Day, on the second Sunday in May. In Japan, meanwhile, the Buddha’s birthday is called “Flower Festival” – Hana Matsuri in Japanese – and celebrated on April 8, following the government’s decision to adopt the Gregorian calendar in 1873.

Yet another date for the Buddha’s birthday in 2023 is June 4: the full moon of the fourth lunar month in the Tibetan lunisolar calendar. The entire month, called Saga Dawa, is considered holy because it includes the Buddha’s birth, awakening and death. Tibetan Buddhists believe that good deeds generate exponentially more positive karma during Saga Dawa than at other times of the year.

The date of the Buddha’s birthday isn’t the only difference between cultures. In South Asia and Southeast Asia, including Tibetan regions, Vesak doesn’t just commemorate the Buddha’s birth, but also his attainment of nirvāṇa, or enlightenment, and his death, known as parinirvana. In East Asia, however, the Buddha’s enlightenment and passing are honored on separate days, so the spring holiday only focuses on the Buddha’s birth.

China: Care for creatures

Throughout East Asia, Buddhists will bathe statues of the infant Buddha-to-be, recite Buddhist scriptures and make donations to Buddhist temples – but there will still be a lot of diversity in these celebrations.

In China, the practice of “fangsheng,” releasing animals, has been part of celebrating the Buddha’s birthday since the 11th century. Devout Buddhists purchase animals otherwise destined for slaughter and release them into the wild. Recently, some cities in China have encouraged greater consideration of local ecosystems to prevent invasive species that worshippers release from crowding out native animals.

A group of people crowds around a hand-held cage with small green birds inside. — Buddhists prepare to free birds during a ceremony to mark the Buddha’s birthday in 2006 in Chongqing municipality, China. China Photos/Stringer via Getty Images News

Another way Chinese Buddhists express compassion for all living beings is by avoiding meat for three days around the Buddha’s birthday – similar to the Tibetan practice of following a vegetarian diet during the month of Saga Dawa.

Korea: Lighting up the sky

Korea was under Japanese imperial rule from 1910 to 1945. During that period, the Japanese government sponsored a joint Japanese-Korean celebration of the Buddha’s birthday that revived the holiday’s religious significance. Though many Koreans opposed the Japanese occupation, some Korean Buddhists appreciated the opportunity to celebrate the Buddha’s birthday as a new pan-Buddhist holiday.

Korean celebrations of the Buddha’s birthday are distinctive for their use of lanterns, which represent the light of awakening and can also be used as vehicles for prayers and vows sent up toward the heavens. Today in South Korea, colorful lantern displays and lantern parades mark the national holiday.

The Buddha’s birthday has even been observed in North Korea since 1988, despite the country’s general suppression of religious activity. In 2018, the holiday served as an occasion for Korean unity, with Buddhists in North and South Korea jointly composing and reciting a prayer for the occasion.

Five monks in robes stand beneath a canopy of brightly colored paper lanterns. — A ceremony to prepare children to live as Buddhist monks for three weeks in Seoul, South Korea, as part of the celebration of the Buddha’s birthday, Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

Vietnam: Renewed traditions

In Vietnam, the celebration of the Buddha’s birthday – known as Phật Đản – was observed in the medieval period, often alongside prayers for rain. However, celebrations seem to have faded over time until the festival was reintroduced in the early 20th century, when the holiday was gaining popularity throughout the region.

The holiday still remains somewhat obscure in northern Vietnamese villages, but has gained popularity elsewhere in the country. Today, Buddha birthday celebrations in Vietnam involve lighting paper lanterns, making offerings to the Buddha and praying for health and well-being. Lotus-shaped lanterns are especially popular because they symbolize the ability to remain pure in an impure world, just like beautiful lotuses grow from murky swamps.

Buddha birthday celebrations that fall earlier in the spring are often the ones international groups focus on. In 1950, the World Fellowship of Buddhists decided to make Vesak an international Buddhist holiday, commemorated on the first full moon of May. Nearly 50 years later, the United Nations passed a resolution to recognize Vesak on the same day, in line with South Asian and Southeast Asian celebrations.

These official acts of recognition mark the importance of this holiday for Buddhists worldwide, but we should also remember the just-as-meaningful celebrations that come a few weeks later.

Megan Bryson, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Shepardson on Turkey’s historic city of Antakya

April 15, 2023 by newframe

Turkey’s historic city of Antakya, known in Roman and medieval times as Antioch, has been flattened by powerful earthquakes in the past – and rebuilt itself

A view of the destruction in Antakya, Turkey, caused by the recent earthquake. AP Photo/Hussein Malla

Christine Shepardson, University of Tennessee

Tens of thousands have died and millions have become homeless in southern Turkey and northern Syria after the massive 7.8 earthquake that struck on Feb. 6, 2023. But the ancient Turkish city of Antakya, known in Roman and medieval times as Antioch, has been here before.

In the late fourth-century Roman world, two days after a powerful earthquake shook the border of Turkey and Syria, the Christian preacher John Chrysostom delivered a sermon to the frightened congregation in his shaken city of Antioch, much as survivors today struggle to understand the destruction. “Your nights are sleepless,” he acknowledged, and possessions “were torn asunder more easily than a spider’s web. … For a short time you became angels instead of humans.”

As a historian of Christianity in the late Roman world, my research on the Christianization of Antioch took me to the area in 2006, 2008 and 2010, and my heart has been breaking to see the region where people welcomed me so generously shattered anew. It helps, though, to know Antakya’s rich history and the resilience and courage of its people, who have rebuilt the city before.

The layers of time

The city has known numerous rulers in its long history, and notable religious diversity. Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities have called Antioch home since late antiquity to today.

In the New Testament, Antioch is where Jesus’s followers were first called “Christians,” and the apostles Peter and Paul met in the city. Roman emperors often spent the winters in the temperate metropolis. The fourth-century Greek teacher Libanius declared in his oration “On Antioch” that this city on the Orontes River was so beautiful that even the gods preferred to dwell there.

A Roman-era ruin that shows a stone arch overlooking Antakya. — Remains of a Roman aqueduct in Antakya. Christine Shepardson, CC BY-NC-ND

The ancient Greek and Roman city came under Muslim control in 637, returned to Greek Christian control in the 10th century, Muslim control briefly in the 11th century, and then western Christian control in 1098 during the First Crusade.

The Crusaders established the Principality of Antioch, which lasted until the 13th-century arrival of the Mongols, when after some struggles the city ultimately found itself ruled by the Muslim Mamluks based in Egypt. It became part of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, and after World War I, France oversaw the region as part of Syria until it was annexed by Turkey in 1939. It has received countless refugees since Syria’s civil war started in 2011.

During my visits, the textured layers of the city’s long history were visible everywhere. The main Kurtuluş Street followed the old Roman road, and the Habibi Neccar mosque, destroyed in the recent earthquake, commemorated the city’s early Muslim history on a site that was previously a church.

The Orontes River still flowed through the city, and modern homes nestled, as Roman homes once did, against the mountain where early Christian ascetics withdrew to pray; remnants of the Roman aqueduct and medieval stone walls snaked through the city and up the mountainside.

The stone façade to St. Peter's Cave Church with three entrances. — Crusader façade to St. Peter’s Cave Church in Antakya. Christine Shepardson, CC BY-ND

The trembling Earth

Earthquakes have punctuated the city’s past as well as its present, including at least two that utterly devastated the Roman city in the way that we witnessed in February 2023.

In his “Roman History” from the early third century, the early historian Cassius Dio described the catastrophic devastation and loss of life from the severe earthquake that ravaged the city in 115, as “the whole earth was upheaved and buildings leaped into the air.” The early Christian historian John Malalas survived another devastating earthquake in the city in 526, and he described in his “Chronicle” the terrible fire that compounded the unfathomable destruction after “the surface of the earth boiled up and … everything fell to the ground.”

Today as well, countless buildings have been flattened, like the historic Habibi Neccar mosque, which had already been rebuilt after another earthquake destroyed it in 1853. The medieval Crusaders built a towering stone entrance to the mountain cave church associated with the apostle Peter, and we wait to learn if it has been damaged.

“I can’t tell you how much it was bad,” my friend Hülya replied to my first panicked message on Feb. 6. Much of her family in Antakya somehow survived, but her uncle and niece, our friend Ercan and his young family, and tens of thousands of others in the region were not so fortunate. “Pray for us,” she wrote.

Hope for the future

The city’s history, though, is one of transition and rebirth, and I believe there is hope amid the wreckage.

Malalas wrote that in 526, “Pregnant women … gave birth under the earth and came out with their infants unharmed,” echoing the survival of a baby girl who was born in Antakya on Feb. 6, 2023, under the collapsed rubble of her home, and has been named Aya, an Arabic word that loosely translates as a sign from God. The city’s Hatay Archaeology Museum houses a breathtaking collection of Roman floor mosaics from its suburb Daphne, famous since Roman times for its natural springs, and the Ministry of Culture has personnel on-site to protect it.

As neighbors dig through toppled buildings for survivors, the world rushes to bring aid. My Knoxville, Tennessee, friend Yassin Terou, a Syrian refugee himself, has returned to the region to provide meals for survivors as part of global relief efforts.

Aid workers and volunteers are rushing in to provide medical attention, food, shelter and clean water to the region, though it remains a struggle to reach those isolated in northern Syria.

The scope of the catastrophe is heartbreaking, but these echoes from the Roman past can, I believe, provide a hopeful reminder of the resilience of the city’s people who have rebuilt from devastating earthquakes before. Perhaps with the world’s support, they can do so again.

Christine Shepardson, Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Spirit Guide: How the Arson of a Black Church in Knoxville Has Affected More Than the Church Community

April 1, 2023 by newframe

In June of 2015, a fire soon ruled as arson burned part of the College Hill Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Knoxville, one of several Black churches in the South that experienced arson that summer. Dr. Todne Thomas, a socio-cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor of African American Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School, is studying what has happened in the church community and the city since the College Hill arson and she spoke about that work with WUOT’s Chrissy Keuper. Listen to the interview here.

Dr. Thomas is the speaker for the 2023 Distinguished Lecture for the University of Tennessee’s Department of Religious Studies. The lecture, “A Black Church Burned: Sanctuary, Loss, and Place-Making in Knoxville,” will be held Thursday February 16th at 5:30pm ET in the Lindsay Young Auditorium at Hodges Library (Room 101) on the UT campus and/or via live webcast.
More information is here.