Department Faculty

Angela Zito

Associate Professor; Chair, Department of Religious Studies; Director of Undergraduate Studies
Major Interests: Cultural history/historical anthropology; critical theories of religion; religions of China; filaility in China; religion and media; history and anthropology of embodiment; gender; performance and subjectivity; documentary film.

 

Adam Becker

Professor; Director of Graduate Studies
Major Interests: Jewish-Christian relations in Late Antiquity; critical theories of religion; Syriac language and literature; reception of classical antiquity; religion in the modern Middle East.

 

Annette Yoshiko Reed

Associate Professor
Major Interests: Second Temple Judaism, New Testament and early Christianity, Jews and Christians in late Antiquity, and Biblical interpretation and parabiblical literature

 

Elayne Oliphant

Assistant Professor
Major Interests: Christianity; secularism critical approaches to the study of religion; visual anthropology; public space; France; Europe; contemporary art; museums; capitalism; xenophobia and privilege

 

Hent de Vries

Professor
Major Interests: Philosophy of religion, modern European thought, history and critique of metaphysics, religion and violence, religion and media, and literature and temporality


Xavier Pickett
Faculty Fellow
Major Interests: African American religion, religious ethics, 19th & 20th century African American literature, emotions, pragmatism, political theory, moral psychology, new religious movements, sociology and social theory, 19th & 20th century African American history, African American philosophy.

 

Dessi Vendova

Adjunct Instructor
Major Interests: Buddhism; The Biography of the Buddha; Buddhist Art; Buddhist Ethics; Buddhist Narratives; Body, Gender, Materiality; pre-modern Chinese Buddhism; East Asian Buddhism; Chinese Religions; Buddhist Ethics; Material Culture; East Asian Religions