Prospective Graduate Students (click here)

Visiting Faculty

AUTUMN:

Professor Devin DeWeese. Devin DeWeese will be a visiting Professor in Religious Studies this fall. He is Professor of Central Eurasian Studies and Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University. He specializes in Islam in Central Asia with a focus on Sufism and Islamic hagiography. He will be filling in for Shahzad Bashir while he is on leave at the Stanford Humanities Center.
His publications include: Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde:  Baba Tükles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition, (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), and a host of articles, among the most recent:  “Succession Protocols and the Early Khwajagani Schism in the Maslak al-??rif?n,” Journal of Islamic Studies (Oxford), 22/1 (2011), pp. 1-35, and “Spiritual Practice and Corporate Identity in Medieval Sufi Communities of Iran, Central Asia, and India:  The Khalvat?/?Ishq?/Sha???r? Continuum,” for Religion and Identity in South Asia and Beyond:  Essays in Honor of Patrick Olivelle, ed. Steven Lindquist (New York/London/Delhi:  Anthem Press, 2010), pp. 251-300.
He will be teaching RELIGST 207B/307B, "Islam in Central Asia" and RELIGST 222D/322D, "The Nasqshbandi Sufi Tradition."

SPRING: Professors Jinhua Chen and Zvi Lederman.

Professor Zvi Lederman. Dr. Lederman received his PhD from Harvard University and is now affiliated with Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology. One of Israel's most experienced field excavators, Lederman has helped to excavate important biblical-era sites at places like Shiloh and Ashkelon and for the last two decades, he has been co-director of the excavations at Tel Beth Shemesh, an important "border town" between Jerusalem and what was once Philistine territory. In the Spring of 2012, he will be serving at Stanford as the Richard and Rhoda Goldman visiting professor in Israel studies, offering two courses on biblical archaeology:
The Bible and Archaeology (RELIGST15A/Jewish Studies15A )
In Search of David and Solomon (RELIGST 182A/382A/ and Jewish Studies 182A/382A)

For more information about the Tel Beth Shemesh excavation, see
http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/archaeology/projects/proj_bethshemesh.html

Affiliated Faculty

AUTUMN: Irene Lin and Yuhan S.-D. Vevaina.

Yuhan S.-D. Vevaina. Lecturer in our department taking on the task this year and next of teaching courses on Zoroastrianism and Iran. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2007 from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. He is a co-editor of the forthcoming, The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Zoroastrianism and is currently working on a book project on Zoroastrian hermeneutics in Late Antiquity. He will be teaching RS 109 and Classics 109, "Emperor, Explorer, and God: Alexander the Great in the Global Imagination" and RS 209/309 and Classics 106/206, "Priests, Prophets, and Kings: Religion and Society in Late Antique Iran" in Fall 2011; RS 209A/309A, "Sugar in the Milk: Modern Zoroastrianism as Race, Religion, and Ethnicity" in Winter 2012; and RS 20A, "The Sun Also Shines on the Wicked: The Problem of Evil in Religious Thought" in Spring 2012.
[email protected]

WINTER: Kirsti Copeland, Azim Nanji and Yuhan S.-D. Vevaina

SPRING: Özgen Felek, Azim Nanji and Yuhan S.-D. Vevaina.

Özgen Felek is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Religious Studies. She received her first Ph.D. from Firat University in Turkey, in classical Ottoman poetry with a focus on the Sebk-i Hindi (Indian Style) poetical movement (2007), and her second Ph.D. from the Near Eastern Studies Department at the University of Michigan with emphasis on Ottoman dream culture and Sufism (2010). She is the co-editor of Victoria R. Holbrook’a Armagan (2006), which is a collection of essays in honor of Victoria Rowe Holbrook. She is also the co-editor of forthcoming Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies (2012). In addition to her academic pursuits, Özgen is a miniaturist and illuminationist. Her love of imaginative arts emerges in performance studies, as well. For more information see:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~felek/beautyandlove/
She will be teaching RS 29, “Men and Masculinity in Islam: Through the Prism of Texts, Art, and Films” and RS 220C, “Islamic Manuscript Illumination: History, Theory, and Practice” in Spring 2012.
[email protected]   Bldg 70, Rm 72C 650-725-7434

Advanced Students Teaching

AUTUMN:

Timothty DeBold, "Biblical Hebrew."

SPRING:

Chiew Hui Ho, "Buddhist Narratives and the Shaping of Medieval Chinese Religiosity."