Department Faculty

Angela Zito

Associate Professor; Chair, Department of Religious Studies; Director of Graduate 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
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

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

 

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.


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.

 

William McGrath

Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies
Major Interests: Buddhism in East and Central Asia, Tibetan and Chinese medical traditions, Tibetan language and history, and the intersections of religion and medicine.
 

Nick Tackes

Adjunct Instructor
Major Interests: Healing and religion in South Asia , ethnography, apocalyptic movements in South Asia, ritual

 

Omid Mehrgan

Adjunct Instructor
Major Interests: Modern German thought, comparative literature, aesthetics, critical theory, philosophy of religion

 

 

 

 

 

 

Religion and queer history, religion and U.S. politics, religion and sexuality, American religious history, American Jewish history, religion and media