From Nonprofit Leadership to Healthcare

May 15, 2025 by Logan Judy

Landyn Ford graduated with a BA in religious studies and a concentration in nonprofit leadership in 2023. 

During his time at UT, he participated in numerous programs at the Howard H. Baker Center for Public Policy and conducted an undergraduate thesis study on healthcare sharing ministries under the supervision of Assistant Professor Manuela Ceballos. 

Ford currently serves as the volunteer programs manager at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital (ETCH) while completing a master’s degree in healthcare administration through the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. 

In his role at ETCH, Ford oversees various programs, including the VolunTeen Program for high school students, which provides volunteer opportunities and attracts nearly 120 students each summer from across East Tennessee. He has developed two new programs for ETCH: the Children’s Hospital Immersive Medical Program (CHIMP) and a Career and Technical Education (CTE) Day. These educational initiatives are designed for students interested in healthcare careers and nonprofit organizations. CHIMP, for example, offers teens who have served at least one summer in the VolunTeen Program a weeklong opportunity to participate in interactive and hands-on experiences, problem-based learning sessions, and healthcare professional forums. 

On top of these leadership roles, he assists the adult volunteer program, managing approximately 200 active volunteers, overseeing onboarding, training, and data management. 

Ford credits his undergraduate work in religious studies for preparing him for graduate school and his work in the healthcare field, noting the student programs, professors, and classes. “UT prepared me to be a productive student, lifelong learner, and committed member of my community, workplace, and society,” he said. 

The future looks bright for Ford. After he finishes his master’s degree, he plans to pursue further graduate work in bioethics and continue to build a career in the healthcare industry. 

We are proud to have Landyn as an alumnus!

Robinson Recognized Religious Studies as Vital

May 15, 2025 by Logan Judy

Sherill Pace Robinson had just recently begun serving as chair of the Department of Religious Studies Board of Visitors when he passed away in November 2024. However, he was a longtime supporter of organizations in the Knoxville community, including the department, and had shared the following comments.

For Pace Robinson, supporting the Department of Religious Studies was part of a family legacy. 

“My parents were very involved in all things Jewish in Knoxville and were integral in the establishment of the chair of Judaic studies,” he explained. “This ingrained in me a sense of responsibility in maintaining religious education for the students at the University of Tennessee.”

His parents, however, insisted that he and his siblings attend college away from their Knoxville home. So his wife, Karen Robinson (’81), is the only family member to have graduated from Rocky Top. She serves on the UT Alumni Board of Directors. 

“I have been a big fan of the university—athletics and academics—my whole life,” he said. After earning a degree in finance, he returned to Knoxville and joined the family business, wholesale distributor Modern Supply Co. Robinson spent his entire career with the company and served as CEO for 25 years before retiring in 2017. 

He also served as a volunteer and leader in numerous organizations, including the Knoxville Jewish Federation, Knoxville Jewish Alliance, Heska Amuna Synagogue, Knoxville Jewish Community Family of Funds, Webb School of Knoxville, Knoxville Utilities Board, and Sertoma.

Together he and his wife established the Karen and Pace Robinson Endowment in Judaic Studies. 

“Karen and I feel a moral obligation towards philanthropy,” Pace Robinson said. “We saw the need to help supplement a small but important part of the university’s education system. This fund also helped me to honor my parent’s efforts with religious studies. “

As a part of the department’s Board of Visitors, he also learned more about the university, how it works and how it benefits students.

“Religious studies is a small but vital part of UT,” he said. “The trend toward de-emphasizing the humanities is concerning and makes the significance of religious studies all the more important these days. The faculty and staff do a great job of managing with limited resources but need outside help to supplement their efforts and continue the vital work of the department.”

Shepardson Publishing New Research

May 15, 2025 by Logan Judy

After completing five years as head of the Department of Religious Studies, Professor Tina Shepardson spent her 2023-24 research leave completing several projects. Among the most exciting was her third monograph, A Memory of Violence: Syriac Christianity and the Radicalization of Religious Difference in Late Antiquity, which should appear by late summer 2025. 

Shepardson also submitted several shorter research projects and saw the publication of others, including “Teach Your Children Well: Martyrs, Monks and Mothers in Severus of Antioch,” in New Trajectories in Syriac Studies; “Jews and Christians in Pagan Antiquity from the First through the Third Centuries,” co-authored with Paula Fredriksen in the Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity; “Christianity Emerges in the Era of Late Antiquity,” in Entangling Web: The Fractious Story of Christianity in Europe; “Embodied Readers: Teaching the New Testament in Rural Protestant America,” in Activism, Bible, and Research-Based Teaching: Practical Approaches for the Global Biblical Studies Classroom; and “Speaking of Jews: Late Antique Antioch’s Shifting Anti-Jewish Rhetoric,” in Antioch on the Orontes: History, Society, Ecology, and Visual Culture. 

She also published an earlier book discussion and a public-facing essay on early Christians in Gaza. In addition, Shepardson presented new work at UT’s Late Antiquity Faculty Research Seminar and conferences in Santa Barbara, California; San Antonio, Texas; and Chicago. 

In spring 2024, she was honored to receive a Best Historical Materials Award from an affiliate of the American Library Association for her 2022 co-edited volume Invitation to Syriac Christianity: An Anthology, and UT’s Dr. Gilya Schmidt Endowed Faculty Award in Judaic Studies. Despite being on leave she enjoyed facilitating discussions on religious diversity and inclusion at resident assistant training sessions, giving a public talk on the history of Gaza, and discussing her research with Princeton and Yale University graduate students. 

She accepted invitations to be on the advisory boards of the Journal of Early Christian Studies and UT’s Department of Africana Studies.

Teaching, Research, and Outreach Thrive

May 15, 2025 by Logan Judy

Greetings!

This year has been exciting and impressive for the Department of Religious Studies. Chancellor Donde Plowman presented the Dr. Marva Rudolph Access and Engagement Unit Excellence Award to the department, and individual faculty have been recognized too. Associate Professor Megan Bryson was honored by the Faculty Senate with its Heart and Soul Award, and Associate Professor Erin Darby was named a 2024-25 Athletics Professor of Excellence.

I am excited to tell you about some of our teaching initiatives. Last year, in collaboration with UT’s Teaching and Learning Innovation, Darby and Associate Professor Rachelle Scott developed a specialized version of our Religious Studies 101 course that targets first-year students who struggle during their first semester of college, to mentor them and teach them critical skills. We also now offer online both the religious studies major and our concentration in religion and nonprofit leadership.

Our faculty have been engaged in some really interesting research. Last year, Assistant Professor Manuela Ceballos had a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, during which she completed her book manuscript Between Dung and Blood: Purity, Sainthood, and Power in the Early Modern Western Mediterranean. She also had two books come out last year, her translation of Abdelfattah Kilito’s La lengua de Adán y otros relatos (Medellín, Colombia: Editorial Sílaba, 2023), and a co-edited volume, Navigating Language in the Early Islamic World Multilingualism and Language Change in the First Centuries of Islam (Brepols, 2024). 

This past summer four of our faculty—Ceballos, Darby, Assistant Professor Marcus Harvey, and Associate Professor Joseph Witt—received stipends to support research initiatives. Harvey is spending this academic year at the Denbo Center for Humanities and the Arts, completing his first book, “Life Is War”: African Epistemology and Black Religious Phenomenology. He is following in the footsteps of Assistant Professor Larry Perry, who held a Denbo Center fellowship last year. 

We are excited that we will be adding a new faculty member next year who will help lead our religion and nonprofit leadership program. 

This fall, we hosted our very well-attended annual Siddiqi Lecture on Muslims in the US and a panel on the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Trial, which featured our own faculty experts talking about the intersections between religion and science. In the spring we hosted the Abraham and Rebecca Solomon and Ida Schwartz Distinguished Lecture on Judaic Studies, featuring Kerry Wallach, and our Distinguished Lecture in Religious Studies was given by Harvard University Professor Tracey Hucks. In March we hosted Rachel Havelock, giving the Karen and Pace Robinson Lecture on Judaic Studies, followed in April by the Anjali annual lecture, a talk titled, “Searching for Sarasvati: Race, Gender, and the Social Lives of Sanskrit in America.” 

I hope we will see you soon at one of our events, in person or over Zoom.

On a personal note, I had a very good summer doing research at the Holocaust Museum and doing some preliminary research in Rwanda looking at Rwandan genocide memorials.

Sincerely,

Helene Sinnreich

Professor and Department Head

Community Engaged Research

November 15, 2023 by religionweb

Did you know that the Department of Religious Studies’ research and activities is not limited to theoretical academic work?

Many of our faculty and students engage in research projects that directly address the needs and concerns of a specific community group. These projects are often designed with community feedback, implemented with community advice, and then disseminated in a way that addresses the needs of the community.

In May 2023, Professor Joseph Witt organized and hosted a small workshop for community-engaged educators and researchers on UT’s campus. Community-engaged research addresses needs in the community and does not approach communities as simply research subjects, but engages community members as research partners.

This workshop, organized with assistance from Amanda Nichols [U.C. Santa Barbara] and Jeremy Sorgen [U.C. Berkeley], brought 10 scholars from across the U.S. to Knoxville to meet and discuss future community-engaged and public-facing pedagogy projects.

In addition to scholars from around campus to learn about projects and resources at UT, workshop attendees met with a small group of religious studies undergraduate majors to learn more about the students’ interests with community-engagement to better address their needs through the classroom.

On the second day, workshop participants built upon what they had learned on the first day to shape new research projects on community-engagement. One result was the formation of a “Community-Engaged Research Collective” that is currently developing a long-term, multi-institution study of the effectiveness of religious studies and community-engaged pedagogy to address climate anxiety and civic engagement among undergraduate students. This research project is currently part of the Office of Teaching and Learning Innovation’s “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Incubator” program and will begin formal data collection in 2024.

On the final day, participants learned more about community-engagement from the perspective of community partners. In all, the workshop served as an opportunity to design new collaborative research projects and should help to advance community-engaged pedagogy in the Department of Religious Studies and across UT’s campus. This workshop was funded by an ORIED SARIF award with contributions from the Department of Religious Studies, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the UT Humanities Center, and with additional support from the Office of Community Engagement and Outreach.

New Courses Corner

November 14, 2023 by religionweb

Vodou Gods and Atlantic Perils: African Religions in the New World (REST 305)

In this course, which premiered fall 2023, students will be engaged in an interdisciplinary study of reconstituted religious traditions in the Americas and the Caribbean sharing West and Central African origins. Students will explore a wide range of these traditions along with theoretical frameworks scholars utilize to account for their decisive appearance in the perilous Atlantic world via the Euro-American slave trade and other centuries-long transnational realities. Some religions and geographies covered include Candomblé (Brazil), Santería (Cuba), Obeah (Jamaica), Kumina (Jamaica), and Vodou (Haiti and North America). 

Religion, Nature, and Ethics (REST 343)

How are global religious communities responding to contemporary environmental crises? How can approaches from religious studies help to analyze and understand ongoing conflicts surrounding environmental issues?

In REST 343, a new class in spring 2024 focusing on the religious dimensions of contemporary environmental problems, students will begin to answer these questions.

The course explores several global case studies that reveal the complex entanglements between religious systems and environmental issues. Because ecological, social, and economic systems are intimately interconnected, the course also explores how these global forces and debates influence local issues in Knoxville and East Tennessee.

Using a community-engaged approach, students in REST 343 will work with local individuals and groups to learn about some of the environmental challenges facing Knoxville and the Appalachian region. Students will then draw upon their community engagement and class experiences to develop a public-facing project that helps inform the broader UT community about these issues and demonstrates the value of religious studies perspectives in helping to understand them.

Students will be happy to hear that this in-person course also may be counted as an elective course for the sustainability major and sustainability minor offered by the Department of Geography & Sustainability, as well as applying toward academic requirements in the religious studies department.

Graduate Assistant Shines Light on Associate Department Head

November 14, 2023 by religionweb

Ashley Cornell is a graduate assistant with the UT Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies. She is a second-year MA student in the Department of History with a pre-modern history (Late Antiquity) focus under the direction of Professors Jacob Latham and Tina Shepardson. 

Ashley obtained a BA in religious studies from UT in 2021 and a BS in information systems security from American Military University (AMU) in 2022. Ashley is a member of campus chapters of Eta Sigma Phi and Phi Beta Kappa. Ashley is interested in understanding of the bodies of religious figures in Late Antiquity, particularly bodies of people who were perceived to be in some way liminal.

Ashley’s current thesis project centers upon a number of Greek-language hagiographical narratives of “transvestite saints” from the second through ninth centuries CE. Her research goal is to illuminate the contents of these primary source documents, investigate what functions and motivations these texts may be expressing, and what details or events are or are not present in the Greek-language versions of these narratives when compared to the narrative of these same saints in other languages.

Ashley is also pursuing a graduate certificate in digital humanities and anticipates that her capstone project will tie into her thesis. Ashley has a background in computer science, and during the Covid-19 pandemic, she became interested in the ways in which digital formats can be more or less helpful in enhancing understanding, assisting in tasks, or enabling remote collaboration. Intrigued by how “adding technology and stirring” does not always produce a “good” end product (we all remember having to rapidly adapt to Zoom – sometimes with comedic or disastrous results) she would like to engineer accessible, highly effective ways to make technologies “work” for students, interested lay-persons, researchers, and professionals engaging with religious studies, Judaic studies, history, and digital humanities.

When not on campus, Ashley enjoys slow runs outdoors, studying Greek with her large dogs (who are of no help, but great support), and exploring all of the excellent restaurants in and around Knoxville with her partner Travis.

Rachelle Scott is an associate professor with, and is now the associate department head of the Department of Religious Studies. Professor Scott studies Theravada Buddhism in South and South-East Asia with an emphasis on contemporary Buddhism in Thailand. Professor Scott’s current research focuses on stories of powerful female ascetics and spirits, the impact of new media on religious authority and community, and the role of the Buddhist sangha in global Buddhism. 

Recently, Ashley Cornell interviewed Professor Scott to discuss her new position in the department. 

What do associate department heads typically do?

It varies from department to department—in the Department of Religious Studies, the associate head of the department is usually in charge of scheduling classes. This includes communicating with professors about what classes they are teaching or would like to teach in the future. Also, the associate head will manage course times so that there are not any scheduling conflicts for professors, for instance making sure that there is not a situation where they would be scheduled to be teaching two classes in different places at the same time. This also means that the associate department head will verify that each semester, the department is scheduling all of the classes that we can provide to fulfill students’ academic needs and provide courses that meet their interests as well.

As incoming associate department head, how do you envision the role?

I was associate department head under Rosalind I. J. Hackett (emerita professor and former department head), and as religious studies is a small department, I envision the role as being there to help the department head with anything she may need, in addition to the scheduling responsibilities. Because this is my second time being associate head of the department, I am looking forward to bringing my skills and experience to the position.

Are there any opportunities for the religious studies department that you are excited to explore during your tenure as associate department head?

I am excited to think broadly about the intersections of Religious Studies with various fields. This year I am also chairing the Department of Religious Studies’ curriculum committee and its assessment committee, which I think will complement and enhance my work as associate department head.

We have students that are coming to the Department of Religious Studies from, or are jointly affiliated with, psychology, communications, child and family studies, global studies, math, chemical engineering, forensic anthropology, criminology, pre-law, biomedical engineering, social work, pre-medicine, and more. As I am now working with scheduling, I want to be sure to ask where we have demand for a class and where we do not and what we can do to meet the needs of our students. The Department of Religious Studies is an integral part of the College of Arts and Sciences and very intersectional so there are a lot of existing connections between fields, as well as connections that can be made, which we want to make sure that we continue to support.

Do you have any hopes for this year that you would like to conclude the interview with? 

This year, I sense a lot of enthusiasm on campus. I feel like last year the feeling on campus at the beginning of the year felt cautiously optimistic as far as everyone trusting that we were truly back on campus and able to be together in-person again. The feeling was still a little tentative, as though everyone was collectively still a bit hesitant to connect and gather in-person. My hope is that in the main office of the religious studies department, we can again be a place where students can come to read, come and lounge, and come together around all of our tables. It would be great if this year we could bring back that feeling that we lost during the Covid pandemic.

Faculty Updates 2023

November 14, 2023 by religionweb

Associate Professor Megan Bryson took over as chair of the Asian Studies Program in fall 2023, and she was also named a Lindsay Young Professor in recognition of her research accomplishments. Her co-edited book, Buddhist Masculinities, was published by Columbia University Press in September 2023, and she is currently completing her second monograph, tentatively titled, Buddhism on the Southern Silk Road. In addition to presenting her work at institutions such as Princeton, Harvard, and Cornell, Professor Bryson has continued to publish articles on Asian religions for The Conversation, which reaches a broad public audience. 

Manuela Ceballos has been busy completing the manuscript of her first monograph Between Dung and Blood: Purity, Sainthood, and Power in the Western Mediterranean. In addition, she has been busy co-editing a book on multilingualism and early Islam titled Navigating Language in the Early Islamic World: Multilingualism and Language Change in the First Centuries of Islam (forthcoming, Brepols), and will present her translation of Moroccan author Abdelfattah Kilito’s The Tongue of Adam and Other Essays, which is in press with Sílaba Editores, at the Medellín (Colombia) Book Fair in September. She is on leave during 2023–2024 with an extremely prestigious National Endowment in the Humanities faculty fellowship that was awarded for her book project.  

During his time at the Humanities Center from fall 2022 to spring 2023, Professor Larry Perry focused on several research projects concerning Black spiritual leftist history. One of his main tasks was revising the manuscript A Black Spiritual Leftist: Howard Thurman and the Religious Left’s Unfinished Business of Race Relations. This work explored Howard Thurman’s life, especially his experiences in Florida, at Morehouse College, in San Francisco, and Boston University. In addition to this, Perry wrote a book chapter on “The New Negro as Pastor.” This chapter discussed the emergence of Black Technocratic Pastors in the 1920s and 1930s. His work on this topic was done in collaboration with the Duke Divinity School’s Black Pastoral Research Collective. Perry also took part in archival work, particularly during his time at Boston University, Clark Atlanta University at the Library of Congress. At each of these spaces Perry procured crucial documents that added layers to his research. These efforts not only underscored Perry’s commitment to thorough research but also his ability to seamlessly integrate resources from multiple renowned institutions. Beyond his personal research, Perry actively engaged with his colleagues at the Humanities Center. He provided them with valuable insights on their projects, contributing to the collaborative nature of the center. Currently, Perry is working on an article about “The Black Spiritual Left in the Civil Rights Movement.” Given his past work, there’s no doubt that this will be another significant contribution to the field.

Perhaps the most notable recent change for Tina Shepardson, Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, is that on July 31, after five years as department head, she passed the leadership of the department to her colleague Helene Sinnreich and started a much-anticipated research leave whose main purpose is to finish her third monograph, A Memory of Violence: The Radicalization of Religious Difference in the Middle East (451-750 CE). She is excited to return to her research on early Christianity, which she presented this summer at Yale and will present this fall at conferences at UC-Santa Barbara and in San Antonio. In the year ahead, she has four articles scheduled to be published and five new essays due to editors. She looks forward to seeing the department continue to thrive under her colleagues’ new leadership, and to welcoming our new colleagues and students to our religious studies community. 

Associate Professor Joseph Witt has been busy building community and university connections in his first year at UT. In 2023, he helped convene the Just Environments Research Seminar and gave invited lectures for the UT OneHealth Initiative and the Church Street United Methodist Church Summer Lecture Series. He also helped organize and host a workshop bringing educators and researchers interested in community-engaged methodologies to Knoxville to develop a new collaborative research project on community-engaged pedagogy in religious studies. In spring 2023, and with assistance from the Office of Community Engagement and Outreach, Joe coordinated community-engaged activities between his classes and community groups/projects such as Appalachian Voices, Battlefield Farm, and Black in Appalachia. Finally, Witt introduced his new course, REST 343 Religion, Nature and Ethics, which he hopes will provide a site for further development of community-engaged teaching and research.

Joan Nicoll Riedl Book Award Recipients, 2023

November 10, 2023 by religionweb

Alexander O’Connor, a graduate of Central High School in Memphis, Tenn., is a senior with a triple major in religious studies, history (honors), and German at UT. Outside of class, he is very interested in learning foreign languages and loves attending cultural festivals and fairs such as the annual Knox Asian Festival. 

Alexander has always been interested in religions, not only what religious beliefs doctrines may be associated with a particular religion, but also the actual application of religious thought to the everyday. He thinks that religions also strike at massive fundamental questions that he definitely wanted assistance in wrapping his head around. Alexander felt that one good strategy to approach such fundamental questions was through comparison and for him that made religious studies a very appealing major as he felt that the program could help him learn how to best approach the fundamental questions he was interested in considering. 

Alexander has pursued a variety of interests while at UT. He has studied the influence of classical Latin rhetoric on St. Jerome’s writings and has also been an intern for the Center for Tennesseans and War.. Alexander recently returned to the US after spending the summer in Berlin, Germany, studying German at the Freie Universität Berlin. He is excited to be able to combine the strong background knowledge that he has built up with the help of everyone at UT and blend this with his own unique experiences in order to create his history honors thesis project, which he will embark upon this fall. 

Alexander has said that his favorite thing about being a part of the religious studies major is that “at every stage, the question ‘what is religion?’ is asked” and every time that question is posed students are increasingly challenged to answer such a nuanced question. 

“Although ‘what is religion?’ seems like a question that is simple to answer, religious studies courses ask students to delve into if and how these sorts of questions can be answered and challenge students to consider if they have assumed an answer,” Alexander said. “I feel like these questions expand my curiosity and the courses generate a sense of excitement about every aspect of various religions as well as cultures, histories, and anything that remotely involves understanding. In religious studies, not only is it okay not to know [something], it is a sign that you are doing [something] right.”

When asked if he had any thoughts that he would like to share in this newsletter, Alexander said: “I think that, especially as students in the humanities, we tend to underestimate how much what we study is valued by some. Whether I was talking to a random person about their religion, in Berlin trying to order Dönner in broken German, talking to veterans about their experiences with war for the Center for Tennesseans and War, I would almost always be met with sheer joy due to the fact that I was talking to them about something they were passionate about. As students who constantly see the humanities getting defunded, we especially tend to get the impression that the humanities are undervalued by everyone, but that is far from the truth.”

Stephen Hay is a senior student that is a double major in religious studies (honors concentration) and English literature with a women, gender, and sexuality program minor. He is a native of Greeneville, Tenn., and enjoys reading classics and modern fiction, playing the saxophone, and spending time with his family and friends. 

Stephen collected his programs at different stages of his journey at UT. He picked up a major in religious studies at the end of his first year, added his minor at the end of his second year, and chose his honors concentration at the end of his third year at UT. Stephen took an introduction to world religions class with Professor Michael Naparstek during his first semester at UT and he was fascinated.

“Every time I went to class my mind was blown yet again. I decided that semester to pick up a major in religious studies because it is something I have developed a passion for, and also because it gives me a way to understand the world and the people around me,” Stephen said. “The longer I have been a major, the more passionate I have become; now I am planning on going to graduate school to continue my education.” 

In addition to Stephen’s normal course work, this year he will be writing his senior honors thesis on Daoism and will also be writing a paper to submit to the American Academy of Religion’s (AAR) undergraduate writing competition. Stephen shares that he is very excited to begin doing more upper-level academic writing.

“I want to get my ideas out into the world instead of merely writing for a class. I am excited to see where the writing process takes me and what I can learn from it,” Stephen said. “I value the thoughts and opinions of others, and try to give everyone a voice, as that is something that is lacking in both the world and, in historical cases, in academia.”

When asked if there was one thing he could share about the religious studies major, what would it be, Stephen responded that religious studies has changed how he sees the world around him.

“It has given me a lens through which to examine interpersonal and institutional relationships and interactions. It has also helped me to approach my understanding of history and cultural differences,” he said. “Also, religious studies is so cool. There is so much going on in the world outside of what we see in the world or in the country around us, and religious studies gives you the briefest glimpse into what is out there.”