2021–2022 Individual Research Grant Winners
Natalya Cherry, Brite Divinity School - Texas Christian University
John Wesley: A Single Life in Communities
Nathanael Homewood, Rice University
Finding Benny Hinn: Global Entanglements in Pentecostal Faith Healing
Janna Hunter-Bowman, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary
Beyond Sanctuary
Monique Ingalls, Baylor University
Gospel Music Goes to Uni: Musical Navigations of Religious Affiliation and Social Identity in British University Gospel Choirs
Cristina Lledo Gomez, BBI - The Australian Institute of Theological Education
A babae theology: Embracing an indigenous maternal-feminist hermeneutic for migrant Filipinas
Jennifer Ortegren, Middlebury College
New Neighbors, New Muslims: Gender, Class, and Community in Contemporary India
Jodie Vann, Dickinson College
Paeons to a New Age: The 1987 Harmonic Convergence and Contemporary “Spiritual, but not Religious” Tourism in Yucatan, Mexico
Wei Wu, Emory University
Buddhist Modernism in China’s Heartland
2020–2021 Individual Research Grant Winners
Anne Blankenship, North Dakota State University
Religion, Race, and Immigration: How American Jews, Catholics, and Protestants Faced Mass Immigration, 1882-1924
Gudrun Buhnemann, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Patanjali as an Authority on Yoga
Stewart Clem, Aquinas Institute of Theology
Free Speech, Hate Speech, and the Christian Theological Tradition
Niki Clements, Rice University
Michel Foucault and Ethics in a Time of Crisis
Nicole Kirk, Meadville Lombard Theological School
Railroad Religion: American Religion on the Move
Candace Lukasik, Washington University in St. Louis
Middle Eastern Christians and the War on Terror: Coptic Christians as Martyrs and Migrants
Leonard McKinnis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Divine Blackness: Race, Religion, and Imagination in the Study of Diasporic African American Religion
Mandy McMichael, Baylor University
Pageant Preachers: Cultural Ordination and Women's Quest for Power
S Brent Rodriguez-Plate, Hamilton College
The Spiritual Life of Dolls: Religious Technologies from Adam to Barbie to AI
Merin Shobhana Xavier, Queen's University
The Dervishes of the North: Rumi, Sufism and the Making of Popular Spirituality in Canada
2019–2020 Winners
Sophie Bjork-James, Vanderbilt University
Religion and Opposition to Organized Racism in the Northwestern United States
Michel Chambon, Hanover College
Spring Couplets and the Materialization of Chinese Christianity
Emily Clark, Gonzaga University
Spiritual Matters: American Spiritualism and Material Culture
Brian A. Hatcher, Tufts University
Where have all the Giris gone? The rise and fall of a monastic network in Bengal
Andre E. Johnson, University of Memphis
The Henry McNeal Turner Project
Breanna J. Nickel, Augustana College
Balthasar Hubmaier’s Expulsion of the Regensburg Jews
Valerie Stoker, Wright State University
In Charisma’s Wake: Writing the Early History of the Mādhva Brahmin Movement
Luke Whitmore, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
Ecology, Post-Secularism, and Cosmopolitics in the Central Indian Himalaya
Rebecca Wollenberg, University of Michigan
God’s Monograph: Medieval Jewish Reading Practices and the Emergence of Modern Judaism
2018–2019 Winners
Evan Berry, American University
Petro-Religion: Fossil Fuel Extraction and Contemporary Religious Life
Katherine Dugan, Springfield College
Catholic Family Planning and American Catholic Identity
April Hughes, Boston University
Proscribing Practice: Local Rituals and Buddhist Practice in Medieval Dunhuang
Blateiskhem L.Nongbri, John Roberts Theological Seminary
Interface of Colonialism and Tribal Religion in the Indian Context: A Postcolonial Reflection
Alexander Rocklin, College of Idaho
Becoming Hindu: The Imposture of Religion and the Power of India in the Afro-Atlantic World
Jessica Starling, Lewis and Clark College
Leprosy, Social Work, and Ethical Praxis in Contemporary Japanese Buddhism
2017–2018 Winners
Elissa Cutter, Loyola Marymount University
Angélique Arnauld: Writings of Reform; Mother Angélique Arnauld, Théologienne
Justine Howe, Case Western Reserve University
Muslim Students and the Making of American Islam
Amy P. Langenberg, Eckerd College
Pragmatic Moral Reasoning and Innovative Social Living in Female Buddhist Monasticism Past and Present
Davina C. Lopez, Eckerd College
Heretic’s Daughter, Historian of Religion: Emilie Grace Briggs (1867-1944)
Monique Moultrie, Georgia State University
Hidden Histories: Faith as a Site of Black Lesbian Activism
Anthony M. Petro, Boston University
Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the American Culture Wars
Brad Stoddard, McDaniel College
“‘I was in prison and you visited me’: Florida’s Faith-Based Prisons and the
Carceral State”
Pamela Winfield, Elon University, NC
Ritual Memory Bodies at Eiheiji Zen Monastery, Japan
2016–2017 Winners
Shatha Almutawa, Willamette University
Playing with Gender and Modernity: Tango in Secular Muslim Contexts
Eileen Barker, London School of Economics (Emeritus)
The Breaking of the Moonies? An Investigation into the Schismatic Tendencies of a New Religion on the Death of Its Founder
Brett Esaki, Georgia State University
Grace Lee Boggs’s Spirituality of Sustainability
Michal Raucher, University of Cincinnati
"Officially and Halakhically Here to Stay": Orthodox Female Clergy in Israel and America
Matthew Riley, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
Reading Beyond Roots: The Theological and Weberian Aspects of Lynn White’s Scholarship and Lynn Townsend White, Jr.: Collected Writings on Religion and Ecology
Kristy Slominski, University of Mississippi
Teaching Moral Sex: A Liberal Religious History of Sex Education
Hugh Urban, Ohio State University
The Path of Desire: Living Tantra in Northeast India
2015–2016 Winners
Kate Bowler, Duke Divinity School
Copastor: Women and Power in American Megaministry
Huaiyu Chen, Arizona State University
The Buddhist Monumentality and Its Paradox: A Study on the Stone Lanterns in Medieval China
Heon Kim, East Stroudsburg University
Sufism in Modern Turkey from the Tanzimat to the Republic: A Documentary Study
Sara McClintock, Emory University
Transactional Reality, Transactional Truth
Brenna Moore, Fordham University
‘Among Winged Beings’: On the Poetics and Politics of Catholic Orientalism in Europe (1917–1960)
Murray Rae, University of Otago, NZ
Testimonies in Stone: Theology and the Spatial Arts
Karen Ruffle, University of Toronto
Somatic Shi'ism: The Body in Deccani Material and Ritual Practice
Darla Schumm, Hollins University
Religion and Disability in America
Sarah McFarland Taylor, Northwestern University
Mediating Eco-Piety: Television, Environmental Moral Engagement, and Popular Culture
Theodore Vial, Iliff School of Theology
Salon Jewesses: Religion, Gender, and the Creation of the Public Square
2014–2015 Winners
Anna Bigelow, North Carolina State University
Objects of Devotion: Islam, Material Religion, and Interreligious Relations in India
Lee H. Butler, Jr., Chicago Theological Seminary
Introducing Africana Pastoral Theology: A Narrativized Historiography
Jill DeTemple, Southern Methodist University
Contemporary Catholic Missions in Rural Ecuador
Rebekka King, Middle Tennessee State University
Judaism, Jesus, and Evangelical Rabbis: A Study of Jewish Affinity Christians
Kevin O’Neill, University of Toronto
For Christ’s Sake: Crack, Christianity, and Captivity
Storm Swain, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia
Case Studies for Teaching Disaster Spiritual Care
Heather R. White, New College of Florida
Gay Liberation at the Church of the Holy Apostles
2013–2014 Winners
Julius Bailey, University of Redlands
“That Hardy Race of Pioneers”: The History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the American West
Kim Haines-Eitzen, Cornell University
Listening to the Desert in Late Antiquity: Landscape, Sensory Experience, and the Religious Imagination
Harold Morales, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Latino Muslim by Design: Race, Religion, Media & the Making of Minority Identities in America
Brian Pennington, Maryville College
Natural Disaster and Divine Agency: Hindu Theodicies of Climate Change
Leela Prasad, Duke University
Moved by Gandhi—A Documentary Film
Mark Rowe, McMaster University
Female Priests in Japanese Temple Buddhism
SherAli Tareen, Franklin and Marshall College
Islam, Tradition, and Democracy: The Case of the Deoband Madrasa
2012–2013 Winners
Antoinette DeNapoli, University of Wyoming
In the Time of Cell Phones, Cable, and the Internet: Paradigms of Modernity and the Changing Face of Gender and Renunciation in North India
Prabhavati C. Reddy, George Washington University
Bathukamma: A Festival of Song and Dance of a Flower Goddess
Nora L. Rubel, University of Rochester
Recipes for the Melting Pot: Reading The Settlement Cookbook
Sonja Spear, University of Iowa
Unmasking Halloween: Americans Play with Love, Fantasy, and Death from the Gilded Age to the Present
Adriaan van Klinken, University of Leeds
Homosexuality, Christianity, and National Identity in Postcolonial Zambia
2011–2012 Winners
Sarah Azaransky, University of San Diego
Benjamin Mays and Black Religious Internationalism, 1936-1948
Evan Berry, American University
Religious Organizations in Global Environmental Politics
Jonathan Ebel, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
G.I. Messiahs: Soldiering, War, and American Civil Religion
Vincent Lloyd, Syracuse University
Black Natural Law
Eric Mortensen, Guilford College
Tales of the Unseen: Nags myi rgod Stories of the Tibetans of Geza
John Nemec, University of Virginia
The Kingdom of Knowledge: Politics, Culture, and Religion in The Vale of Kashmir, 699–1149
Jeffrey Samuels, Western Kentucky University
Being Buddhists: Multiple Minorities in Malay-Muslim Malaysia
Hugh Urban, Ohio State University, Columbus
“Zorba the Buddha”: Globalization, Late Capitalism, and Postmodern Spirituality in the Osho Movement
Albert Wuaku, Florida International University
Mambos, Houngas, and Health in the Diaspora: A Study of Vodou’s Role in the Dispensation of Health in South Florida
2010–2011 Winners
G. William Barnard, Southern Methodist University
The Sacred Drink of the Forest: An Exploration of the Santo Daime Tradition in Brazil
Shin-yi Chao, Rutgers University
The Revival of Communal Religion in Present Northern Rural China: The Worship of Lady Wei (251–334 AD) as a Case Study
Connie Lasher, Santa Clara University
"Ignatian Humanism" and Ecological Identity: Extending the Legacy of Jesuit Higher Education
Cuong Mai, University of Vermont
The Cult of the Goddess Quan Am in Medieval Vietnam
Martin Nguyen, Fairfield University
The Social and Textual Landscape of a Medieval Muslim Scholarly Community
Michael Penn, Mount Holyoke College
The Automated Scribal Identification Project
2009–2010 Winners
Chad Bauman, Butler University
Religious Identity, Conversion, and Hindu-Christian Conflict
Philip Freeman, Luther College
The Letters of St. Patrick and Early Patrician Literature
Rabia Gregory, University of Missouri-Columbia
Marrying Jesus in the Later Middle Ages
David Hollenberg, James Madison University
A Portrait of a Contemporary Scholastic Community under Siege: The Zaydi ‘ulama’ (scholars) of Sanaa, Yemen
John Nelson, University of San Francisco
Experimental Buddhism in Contemporary Japan
Brent Plate, Hamilton College
A Sensual History of Religion: Stones
Christine Shepardson, University Tennessee, Knoxville
Controlling Contested Places: Fourth-Century Antioch and the Spatial Politics of Religious Controversy
2008–2009 Winners
Thia Cooper, Gustavus Adolphus College
Theologies of Immigration: Faith and Practice in Brazilian-American Community
Margaret Cormack, College of Charleston
Saints in Icelandic Placenames and Folklore
Susan Ross, Loyola University Chicago
Exploring Global Feminist Theologies in a Postcolonial Space: A Learning and Research Immersion Project for Feminist Graduate Students and Post-Graduates from Africa to the US
A.Whitney Sanford, University of Florida
Gandhi’s Environmental Legacy: Food Democracy and Social Movements
Caroline Schroeder, University of the Pacific
From Ascetic Ingenue to Jephthah’s Daughter: Children and the Representation of Children in Early Christian Monasticism
Laura Stivers, Pfeiffer University
Making a Home for All in God’s Compassionate Community: A Feminist Liberation Assessment of Christian Response to Homelessness and Housing
Liz Wilson, Miami University
Buddhist Gender Matters: The Sexed Lives of Celibate South Asian Buddhist Saints
2007–2008 Winners
Julius Bailey, University of Redlands
Making a Homeland: Race, Religion, and the Meaning of Africa in the Nineteenth-Century African Methodist Episcopal Church
Jennifer Eichman, Seton Hall University
Buddhist-Inspired Contemporary Art: Zhu Ming and His Network
William P. Harman, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga
Suicide Bombers Become Goddesses: Women, Apotheosis, and Sacrificial Violence in South Asia
Steven Heine, Florida International University
Sacred High City, Sacred Low City: A Tale of Religious Sites in Two Tokyo Neighborhoods
Jennifer G. Jesse, Truman State University
There's a Methodism to His Madness: William Blake as a Religious Moderate
Greg Johnson, University of Colorado at Boulder
Religion in the Moment: Contemporary Lives of Indigenous Traditions
Frank J. Korom, Boston University
From Guru to Shaykh: Bawa Muhaiyyaddeen and the Making of Transnational Sufi "Family"
Leela Prasad, Duke University
Annotating Pastimes: Oral Narrative and Religion in Colonial India
Miranda Eberle Shaw, University of Richmond
Buddhist Goddesses of Tibet and Nepal: Final Phase of Fieldwork
Kerry Martin Skora, Hiram College
Recollecting Minling Thrichen Rinpoche's Vision: The History and Contemporary Lived Experience of a Seventeenth-Century Mindroling Monastery and Its Holy Landscape in Central Bhutan
Manuel A. Vasquez, University of Florida
Performing Identities and Spaces among Brazilian and Congolese Immigrants in London and Atlanta: The Case of Two Transnational Religious Networks
2006–2007 Winners
Linda L. Barnes, Boston University School of Medicine
Chinese Religious Healing in America: A Social History, 1849-2004
Wendy Cadge, Brandeis University
Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine
Heidi Campbell, Texas A&M University
Exploring How Religiosity Shapes Media Use & Interaction in a Global Information Society in Israel
Frances Garrett, University of Toronto
Organization and Analysis of Digital Editions of Tibetan Religious and Medical Histories
R. Marie Griffith, Princeton University
Holy Sex: Christians and the Sexual Revolution, from the Kinsey Reports to True Love Waits
Karline McLain, Bucknell University
Envisioning Hinduism: Raja Ravi Varma and the Visual Canon
Donald S. Prudlo, Jacksonville State University
The Anti-Heretical Efforts of Peter of Verona: An Investigation into the Lived Religion of the Medieval Italian Laity
Megan H. Reid, University of Southern California
Judging Race and Religion: Pierre Crabites and African American Muslims in Early Twentieth-Century Cairo
Sufia Mendez Uddin, University of Vermont
Speaking the Same Language: Muslim and Hindu Veneration of Bonbibi
Archana Venkatesan, St. Lawrence University
Embodying Memories: Performance and Ritual Culture at the Vishnu Temple of Alvar Tirunagari, South India
Michael J. Zogry, University of Kansas
Playing or Praying? The Cherokee Anetso Ceremonial Complex and the Performance of Cultural Identity
2005–2006 Winners
Grace G. Burford, Prescott College
B. Horner and the Transmission of Buddhism to the West
Jamsheed K. Choksy, Indiana University, Bloomington
Whither the Zoroastrian Minority Amidst Sectarian Sociopolitics in Contemporary Iran
Jane Naomi Iwamura, University of Southern California
Altared States: A Cultural History of the Japanese American Home Shrine
Meritxell Martin-I-Pardo, The University of the South
The Role of Multicultural Festivals in the Creation of Hindu Discourses of Religious Self-Representation
David L. McMahan, Franklin and Marshall College
The Making of Modern Buddhism
Lori Pearson, Carleton College
Gendered Elements in Troeltsch's Theories of Protestantism and Modernity
Michael Penn, Mount Holyoke College
Imaging Islam: Syriac Christian Responses to the Islamic Conquest
Craig R. Prentiss, Rockhurst University
"Terrible, Laughing God": Challenging Divine Justice in African-American Anti-Lynching Plays, 1916–1945
Timothy M. Renick, Georgia State University
Preemptive Justice? Just Cause, Unrealized Threats, and the Grounds of War
Omid Safi, Colgate University
The Many Lives of Rumi—Textual and Oral
Julius N. Tsai, Texas Christian University
The Cult of the Master in Late Tang Daoism
Hugh B. Urban, Ohio State University, Columbus
Matrix of Power: Blood, Kingship, and Sacrifice in the Worship of Mother Goddess Kamakhya
2004–2005 Winners
Paula Arai, Carleton College
Healing Buddhist Women: Japanese Rituals of Transformation
Robert M. Baum, Iowa State University
Messengers of God: Diola Women Prophets in a West African Religious Tradition
Gudrun Buhnemann, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Tantric Iconology of Nepal
Jacob Paul Dalton, McMaster University
Beyond Anonymity: Paleographic Analyses of the Dunhuang Manuscripts
Nicola Denzey, Harvard Divinity School and York University, Toronto
Gendering the Journey: Women's Lives and Deaths from the Catacombs of Rome 200–400 CE
Paul C. Kemeny, Grove City College
The First Moral Majority: The New England Watch and Ward Society and Moral Reform Politics in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century America
Lance D. Laird, Boston University School of Medicine
The Profession of Islam and the Health Care Profession in Boston
Charles William Miller, University of North Dakota
The Bible in the Pacific: Ideology, Interpretation, and Colonialism in 19th Century Hawai'i
Vijaya Rettakudi Nagarajan, University of San Francisco
Trees in Temples and Temples in Trees: Sacred Groves and the Commons in Tamil Nadu, India
Diana Walsh-Pasulka, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Child Immortality in the Nineteenth-Century United States
2003–2004 Winners
Shahzad Bashir, Carleton College
Bodies of Saints: Religion and Society in the Late Medieval Islamic East
Sid Brown, University of the South
Violence at the Intersection: Understanding American Buddhism Through the 1991 Arizona Thai Temple Massacre
Kathryn McClymond, Georgia State University
Ritual Gone Wrong
Daniel J. Meckel, Case Western Reserve University
Gods in the Family: Possession and the Coming of Age in the Hindu Himalaya
Jin Y. Park, American University
Pojo Chinul and Hwada Meditation in Korean Buddhism
Sally M. Promey, University of Maryland
The Public Display of Religion in the United States
Arlene M. Sanchez Walsh, DePaul University
Workers for the Harvest: Latino Pentecostal Migrant Workers during the Dust Bowl
Valerie Stoker, Wright State University
Harming the Common Good: A Kirpan Case in Quebec
Michael D. Swartz, Ohio State University
Judaism and the History of Vedic Sacrifice
Janet H. Tulloch, Carleton University
Hearing the Female Voice in Early Christian Art and Archaeology: the Links between Roman-Trier 'Speaking Cups' and Inscribed Speech on Early Christian Banquet Scenes
Nelly van Doorn Harder, Valparaiso University
History of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchs in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century