Current Students

Kristi Woodward Bain is a doctoral candidate in Medieval ChristianityandHistory. Her primary interests are conflict, community identity, and collective memory in late medieval English parishes. Kristi's other research interests include late medieval German parish life, lay enactment of religious reform, and women's religious and secular activities within the parish community. Recent awards include the DAAD Intensive Language Grant, the Northwestern University Graduate Research Grant and the Schallek Fellowship for year 2012-2013, awarded by the Medieval Academy and Richard III Society (American Branch). Her advisor is Richard Kieckhefer.

Stephanie Brehm is a doctoral student in American religions. She studies religion and popular culture, specifically humor, in contemporary American life. Her work combines ethnography, history, cultural studies, and media studies. Her advisor is Professor Orsi. Before coming to Northwestern, Stephanie graduated with a B.A. from Florida State University and an M.A. from Miami University of Ohio.

Stephanie Brenzel is a doctoral student in Judaism. Her research interests are   religious movements in modern Judaism and 19^th and 20^th century continental philosophy. In particular, she studies Jewish responses to change and trauma from a philosophical, historical, and literary perspective. Before coming to Northwestern, Stephanie graduated from Rhodes College and was an English Teaching Assistant with the Fulbright Program. Her advisor is Kenneth Seeskin.

Jennifer Callaghan is a doctoral student in American Religions. She is interested in historical and ethnographic methods. Her primary research interests are American conservative Catholics and the development of the study of religion. Her advisor is Robert Orsi.

Shuman Chen is a doctoral candidate in the "Buddhism in Its Asian Context" track. She is also a member of the Asian Studies Cluster. Her primary research is Chinese Tiantai Buddhist philosophy. Her secondary research interests include Chan/Zen Buddhism, Buddhist art, and Daoist philosophy. Her article, “Chinese Tiantai Doctrine on Insentient Things’ Buddha-Nature,” was published in the Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal in July, 2011. Her most recent publication, “Buddha-Nature of Insentient Beings,” in the Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, second edition, is forthcoming. Her committee is comprised of George Bond, Brook Ziporyn, and Sarah E. Fraser.

Brian Clites is a doctoral candidate in American Religions. His work combines ethnography, American history, and theories religious authority. He is currently writing his dissertation.

The Politics of the Catholic Sexual Abuse Crisis: Trauma, Despair, and Reform Amongst the People of God, which explains how lay Catholics have transformed the trauma of sexual abuse into an agenda of social and ecclesiological reform. Brian has recently been awarded The Searle Graduate Teaching Award, a TGS Research Grant, The Francis X. Keenahan Teaching Award and a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS). Brian is also Chair of the History of Religions Section for the Midwest American Academy of Religion. His committee is comprised of Robert Orsi (advisor), Sarah Taylor, and Cristina Traina.

Matthew John Cressler is a doctoral candidate in American Religions. He specializes in American Catholic history and African American religious history, paying particular attention to conceptions of race and nationalism. His dissertation is titled “Authentically Black and Truly Catholic: African American Catholics in Chicago from Great Migrations to Black Power,” which won the American Catholic Historical Association’s fourteenth annual John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award. His research has been funded by the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism (University of Notre Dame) and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities (Northwestern University).

Vanessa Crosby is a doctoral candidate in the Medieval Christianity track. Her second department is Art History, and her primary research interests are medieval sacred architecture and devotional art, particularly in Spain and the Mediterranean region.

Kristin Doll is a doctoral candidate in Religion, with a concentration in Medieval Christianity. She is currently doing research for a dissertation on church fires and reconstruction in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France. Her other research interests include church architecture, high medieval Marian devotion, and pilgrimage.

Kate Dugan is a doctoral candidate in American Religions. She studies post-Vatican II American Catholicism and is particularly interested in prayer practices among contemporary Catholics. Kate co-edited From the Pews in the Back: Young Women in Catholicism (2007), a collection of essays about contemporary Catholic identity. Her advisor is Robert Orsi.

Hayley Rose Glaholt is a doctoral candidate in Religion, Ethics, and Public Life, focusing on religious animal ethics. Her research addresses lived ethics, engaged religion, religious perspectives on nonhuman animals, gendered ethical theory, and the self-definition of communities. She is interested in the nineteenth century as a time of religious diversification, particularly the relationships between spirituality, food, utopianism, and agriculture. Hayley's dissertation, titled Violence in Healing: Nineteenth Century Quakers Debate the Morality of Animal Vivisection, Gender, and Medicine in the Earthly Peaceable Kingdom, investigates the ethical boundaries of the Quaker peace testimony using nineteenth-century Friends' debates surrounding vivisection (live experimentation upon animals) as a central theme. It questions the species-barrier of religious pacifism and argue that Quakers briefly expanded their moral community between 1870 and 1914 by conceptually acknowledging and condemning both inter-species and intra-species violence. Recent awards include 2010-2011 Graduate Fellow, Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities (Northwestern Unversity), 2010 New England Regional Fellowship Consortium Grant, 2010 Gest Fellowship (Haverford College), 2010 Culture & Animals Foundation Grant, 2010 Weinberg technology-Enhanced Doctoral Research Award (Northwestern University), and the 2009 Human-Animal Studies Fellowship (Animals & Society Institute, Duke University). Her advisor is Cristina Traina.

Alyssa Henningis a doctoral student in Religion, Ethics, and Public Life; she is also pursuing a law degree through Northwestern's JD/PhD program. She has wide-ranging interests in bioethics, but is particularly interested in Jewish bioethics, the role(s) of religious perspectives in American bioethics discourse, and bioethics policy-making.

Tina Howe is a doctoral candidate in Islamic Studies, specializing in the areas of Islamic family life, Islam in America, and Islam in North Africa. She is also interested in broader theories of gender, secularism, and religious authority. Her master's thesis showed how Muslim reformers in mid-twentieth-century Morocco appropriated Islamic family law into their discursive arguments for national unity and modernization.  Tina's dissertation, Suburban Islam: Redefining Family, Authority, and Tradition in Contemporary Chicago, explores the ways in which Muslims are constructing a distinct American identity through new, family-oriented Islamic institutions that seek to foster healthier marriages, educate children about Islam, and ease generational pressures. Her dissertation shows how these institutions are transforming the religious landscape of Chicago’s suburbs through their emphasis on civic engagement, volunteerism, and female religious leadership.  Recent awards include the 2012-2013 American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship and the 2010 TGS Summer Language Grant.  Her advisor is Sani Umar.

Lynn Jencks is a doctoral candidate in the Theology and Religious Reflection concentration. Her studies in Contextual and Liberation Theologies focus on expanding the categories of what constitutes theological expression, and who is considered a theologian. She studies methods of collaborating with communities whose non-written theological expressions are under-represented in scholarly theological publications. Her dissertation therefore focuses on engaged ethnography as a theological method. Specifically, she demonstrates a theological method that uses Participatory Action Research-based ethnography, a collaborative model that focuses on the research goals and interests of the interlocutors. Her advisor is Cristie Traina.

Candace Kohli is a doctoral student in Theology and Religious Reflection. She studies the 16th century Protestant Reformation, specializing in the theology of Martin Luther. She is particularly interested in Luther's utilization of gift for an effective, ontological change in his understanding of the virtuous Christian life. She also works on the political theology of the Reformers, looking especially at their understanding of the divine right of kings. Christine Helmer is her advisor.

Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley is a third-year PhD student studying medieval Christianity. Her interests include saints, both in the Christian tradition and in a comparative perspective, the history of childhood, and the history of biblical interpretation. She is currently the Assistant Master for the Communications Residential College. In addition, she serves on the Executive Boards of the Northwestern University Interfaith Initiative and the Graduate Women Across Northwestern student groups. Her advisor is Richard Kiekhefer.

Joseph D. Moser Jr. (Jody) completed a Master's degree from Harvard with a focus in ethics before coming to Northwestern. An ethicist with roots in religion and philosopy, his research interests include alterity, violence, responsibility, and limit cases in phenomenology. His current research focuses upon the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and the 1994 Rwandan Genocide in an effort to bring certain resources of contemporary French phenomenology to discussions and processes of justice and reconciliation in the wake of violence. Joseph received a Fulbright grant in 2010 to conduct his dissertation research – constructing a phenomenological theory of pardon – in Rwanda. A member of the Northwestern Curling Club, Moser is also a two-time National Champion in US College Curling.

Victoria N.J. Prussing is a doctoral candidate in Medieval Christianity. Her research intestes center on the Middle Ages, with special interest in mysticism, gender, monasticism, heathcare, and religion in everyday life. Her dissertation explores the significance of illness in medieval monastic culture, with a focus on late medieval German nuns. Recent awards include the Fulbright Graduate Fellowship 2008-2009 (Germany), and the DAAD Scholarship 2008-2009 (declin ed). Her advisor is Richard Kieckhefer.

Michal Raucher is a doctoral candidate in Religion, Ethics and Public Life.  She also works in Gender Studies, Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, and Bioethics. Her broader goal is to argue that a person's ethics are the result of his/her daily negotiation and reconciliation of multifaceted and intimate relationships that exist in constant tension.  Michal contends that individulas construct ethics for themselves within overwhelming cultural moral frameworks, and her research contributes to an understanding of the multifaceted relationship between religious and medical authorities.  Michal's dissertation with provide an analysis of the triangular relationship of religion, medicine and the individual in Israeli society.  Using date from a two-year ethnographic study of reproductive ethics in the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community in Jerusalem, she argues that although the medical and religious authorities attempt to control the reproductive lives of Haredi women, the women construct an ethical system based on their embodied knowledge.  Foundation for Jewish Culture Doctoral Scholarship, the 2009-2010 Fulbright Fellowship, and 2009 American Society of Bioethics and Humanities Early Career Support Grant.  Her advisors are Laurie Zoloth, Cristina Traina, and Helen Schwartzman.

Benjamin Ricciardi is a doctoral student studying philosophy of religion, especially modern Jewish philosophy.  Before coming to Northwestern, he earned an MA in Jewish Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a BA in Philosophy from Arizona State University.  His primary interests are the role of reason and autonomy in Western religious (especially Jewish) discourse and how that discourse can interface with the broader secular philosophical conversation in a variety of areas.  He is particularly interested in the Kantian strain in modern Jewish thought.  Secondary areas of interest are early modern philosophy, political philosophy, and ontotheology.    His advisor is Kenneth Seeskin.

Matthew Robinson is a doctoral candidate in Theology and Religious Reflection. He is currently writing a dissertation on Friedrich Schleiermacher's theory of free sociability (freie Geselligkeit) and its broader importance for Schleiermacher's theory of religion and his theology. His areas of specialization are: German philosophy and theology from the Enlightenment to the early twentieth century, in particular the philosophy of history(Geschichtsphilosophie) and ethics (Ethik, Sitten, Moral); the history of Christian ecclesiology, with a special interest in the role of contextual factors (political and economic) in the development of Christian understandings of church. Awards include: DAAD Research Grant, year-long fellowship (2012-2013); Columbia Council for European Studies Pre-Dissertation Fellowship (2011); DAAD University Summer Course Grant (2010); TGS Summer Language Grant (2010). His advisor is Christine Helmer

Hannah Scheidt is a first-year doctoral student in American Religions. She is interested in contemporary religious expression in America and particularly in religion and modern technology. Past projects include a study of religion in virtual worlds (field work completed in Second Life), which not only examined how religion interacts with new technologies, but how the technology itself might have  a religious component. Hannah is also recently interested in atheism in America and atheist communities online. She graduated from Bowdoin College with a B.A. in Religious Studies and English Literature.

Ariel Schwartz is a third-year doctoral student in the Contemporary Religions track. She studies the impact of violence to sacred spaces, exploring the concepts of "violence" and the "sacred" and examining phenomenological experience and the formation of collective memory, with particular attention to American Jewish communities. She also contends with political constructions of religion, violence, and space through studies of hate crime law. She is the president of the Religious Studies department's Graduate Student Association and is helping to construct a graduate certificate in "Contemporary Religion and Global Politics."

Diego Soto is a doctoral student in Religion, Ethics and Public Life. He is interested in describing and analyzing the ways in which religious practices and ideas continue to influence the “secular” culture of sexuality in Costa Rica (his home country). He was awarded with the Fulbright LASPAU scholarship. Recently the National University of Costa Rica published his book Demanda Erotica. Religion terminable e interminable; it is a study on how Latin American Theologians of Liberation have read Freud’s ideas on religion. His advisor is Cristina Traina.

Alex Thurston is a doctoral candidate in Islam in Africa. His research interests include Islam and politics, Islamic law, religious education, transnational religious exchanges, and uses of new media by religious activists. In 2011-2012, he conducted field research in Kano, Nigeria, London, England, and Washington, DC with the support of fellowships from the Social Science Research Council and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. His dissertation, "Northern Nigeria’s Arab-Educated Activist Intellectuals: Law, Media, Politics, and Islam, 1954-2011,” focuses on how study at Arab universities affected the religious identities, career trajectories, and political engagement of late colonial and postcolonial Muslim scholars in Northern Nigeria. Alex holds an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and was a Fulbright Scholar in Senegal in 2006-2007. His writing has appeared in Islamic Africa, Foreign Policy, the Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. His adviser is Dr. Muhammad Sani Umar.

Stephanie Wolfe is a doctoral candidate in American Religion. Her ethnographic dissertation, Urban Renewal: American Evangelicals Encounter Injustice in Chicago, examines white evangelical Christian efforts to address racism and poverty in African American urban communities. Her dissertation research was funded by a Graduate Research Grant from Northwestern University. She is also a Graduate Fellow in the Brady Scholars Program in Ethics and Civic Life. Her research interests include American evangelicalism, the sociology of religion, urban religion, and the intersection of religion with race, politics and economics. Her adviser is Robert Orsi.