February 8 The Department of Religion is a co-sponsor of the year-long series, "Onondaga Land Rights and Our Common Future," which will begin Monday, February 8th, with a discussion of the film "Brighten the Chain" with Onondaga leaders at Syracuse Stage, 7 p.m. Prof. Phil Arnold has played an active role in making this happen.

February 9 Ann Gold (Professor of Religion and Anthropology) will give a lecture on "Why Sacred Groves Matter: post-romantic claims" and a seminar on "Food Values: sketches from Rajasthan" at the University of Flordia.

February 13 Gustav Niebuhr (Associate Professor in Religion & the Media) will be a keynote speaker with Kathleen Norris at the Search for Meaning: Pacific Northwest Spirituality Book Fair, Seattle University, School of Theology and Ministry.

December, 2009: Philip Arnold (Associate Professor of Religion) accompanied a Haudenosaunee delegation to the Parliament of the World's Religions in Melbourne, Australia, where they were active in pressing for reversal of the Doctrine of Discovery. For more on the Parliament and Phil’s comments on it, see Indian Country Today.

December, 2009: Ed Mooney (Professor of Religion and Philosophy) is President-Elect of the Kierkegaard Society (North American).

December, 2009: Two new books on the work of John D. Caputo (Thomas J. Watson Professor) have recently been published: Cross and Khora: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo, ed. Marko Zlomislic and Neal DeRoo (Pickwick, 2010) and Religion, Metaphysics, and the Postmodern: William Desmond and John D. Caputo, Christopher Ben Simpson (Indiana University Press, 2009).

December, 2009: Diane Quigley successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation, "Promoting Research Ethics Training: Understandings of Community, Partnership, Virtue and Diversity" (directed by Prof. Ann G. Gold).

October 29, 2009: Joseph Alexander Snow successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation, "Listening to Places: A Comparative Study of Zen, Sufism, and Cosmology" (directed by Prof. Joanne P. Waghorne).

October 29, 2009: Dorina Parmenter successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation, "The Iconic Book: The Image of the Christian Bible in Myth and Ritual" (directed by Prof. James W. Watts).

October 23, 2009: Edward Mooney (Professor of Religion and Philosophy) has written Lost Intimacy in American Thought: Recovering Personal Philosophy From Thoreau to Cavell, now published by Continuum.

October 7, 2009: Prof. Joanne Waghorne attended the opening party and preview of "Maharaja" The Splendour of India's Royal Courts" at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  She contributed "The Power of Public Splendour" to the accompanying volume Maharaja: The Splendour of India's Royal Courts edited by curators Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer and published by the museum. 

October 7, 2009.  Juliana Finucane, after successfully defending her dissertation "When Bodhisattvas of the Earth Become Global Citizen's: Soka Gakkai in Comparative Perspective" (advisor JP Waghorne) arrived in Singapore to take up her new position as a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore.

September 23, 2009: Juliana Finucane successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation, "When Bodhisattvas of the Earth become Global Citizens: Soka Gakkai in Comparative Perspective" (directed by Prof. Joanne P. Waghorne).

July 23, 2009: Diana Walsh Pasulka (Ph.D. 2003) has won a five-year, $1.6 million Teaching American History grant. The grant will fund a joint initiative between UNC Wilmington, where Pasulka is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, and the school districts of three local counties to "instruct teachers in traditional American history and how religion has affected that history" (for more, see the Star News, http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20090723/ARTICLES/907234003).

July, 2009: Edward Mooney (Professor of Religion and Philosophy) edited Ethics, Love, and Faith in Kierkegaard: Philosophical Engagements , published by Indiana University Press in the Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion.

July 1, 2009: Dean George Langford has appointed James W. Watts (Professor of Religion) to chair the Department of Religion from 2009-2012.