Graduates
Anthony E. Alonso
Current Status: Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture and Director of Catholic Studies, Candler School of Theology, Emory University
Education: Bachelor of Music, Northwestern University (2002); Master of Arts, Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University (2011); Ph.D., Emory University (2017)
GDR Academic Project: Centered upon Liturgical Theology, Ritual Studies, Ecclesiology and Theological Aesthetics
GDR Area of Study: Persons, Community and Religious Life (Liturgical Studies)
Dissertation Title: “Eucharistic Hope in a Commodified World”
Current Research: The application of ritual studies to liturgical studies and its relationship to ecclesiology inspires my scholarship. I am interested in the complex ways in which communities appropriate their understandings of tradition; the multivalent interaction of the verbal and non-verbal languages of ritual prayer; and the ways in which the church’s worship embodies its ecclesiological structures. My current research focuses on the relationship between consumer culture and liturgical practice.
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Lee Ann Bambach
Current Status: Adjunct Professor, Faith-Based Dispute Resolution, Islamic Law, Islamic Banking and Finance, Emory University School of Law
Education: B.A., Brown University (1986); M.T.S., Harvard School of Theology (1991); J.D., University of Georgia School of Law (1997); Ph.D., Emory University (2014)
GDR Academic Project: My academic project looked at the intersection of Islamic law (sharia) and U.S. law.
GDR Area of Study: West and South Asian Religions
Dissertation Title: “That Ye Judge With Justice: Faith-Based Dispute Resolution by Muslims in an American Context”
Current Research: My current research focuses on Islamic arbitration in the United States.
Claire Bischoff
Current Status: Adjunct Professor of Religious Education, Lexington Theological Seminary
Education: B.A., Saint Olaf College (2001); M.A., Luther Seminary (2004); Ph.D., Emory University (2011)
GDR Academic Project: My academic work at Emory focused on developing a theological anthropology and religious education pedagogy that was responsive to the realities of young women and supportive of their further growth as women of faith.
GDR Area of study: Persons, Community, and Religious Life
Dissertation Title: “Toward Tensegrity: Young Women, Narrative Agency, and Religious Education”
Current Research: My current research focuses on parenting and the academy, nurturing parents' spiritual journeys, and reflecting theologically on parenting practice.
Sarah Bogue
Current Status: Head of Research and Access Services, Candler School of Theology, Emory University
Education: B.A., Davidson College (2007), M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary (2010), Ph.D., Emory University (2016)
GDR Academic Project: My practices project was on Presbyterian (PCUSA) women's book clubs, and my practices-themed comprehensive exam was a comparative analysis of Christian and Sufi Muslim theology, comparing "practical" treatises (Isaac of Ninevah, Abu Madyan) and mystical ones (Pseudo-Dionysius, Ibn Arabi and Avicenna).
GDR Area of Study: Historical Studies
Dissertation Title: “Hrotsvit’s Legends as Discipline and Formation: The ‘Nectar of Heavenly Grace’”
Benjamin Brazil
Current Status: Assistant Professor and Director of the Ministry of Writing Program, Earlham School of Religion
Education: B.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1999); M.T.S., Candler School of Theology (2005), Ph.D., Emory University (2015)
GDR Academic Project: My academic project looks at youth travel practices as expressions and enactment of new ideals of self and the emergence of contemporary spirituality (in the “spiritual-but-not-religious sense”).
GDR Area of Study: American Religious Cultures
Dissertation Title: “Wandering Spirits: Youth Travel and Spiritual Seeking, 1964-1980”
Current Research: I continue to explore the wide-ranging travel practices of post-war Americans. I am increasingly interested in the connections between fantasy, practice, and identity.
Johann Choi
Current Status:
Education: B.A., University of Southern California, M.Div., Duke Divinity School; Ph.D., Emory University (2018)
GDR Academic Project: Drawing on the Early Church Fathers, particularly their views on personhood and community, for the formation of a Pastoral Theology to address some of the issues in pastoral care today.
GDR Area of Study: Persons, Community and Religious Life (Pastoral Theology)
Dissertation Title: Re-thinking/embodying Pastoral Theology: Ritual in the Care of Moral Injury in Veterans
Ashley Coleman Taylor
Current Status: Instructor of Women's Studies, Agnes Scott College
Education: B.A., Spelman College (2006); Ed.M., Harvard Graduate School of Education (2007), Ph.D, Emory University (2016)
GDR Academic: My intersubjective research methodology combines pragmatic philosophy, ethnography, and black feminist theory to examine black women’s embodiment in The Puerto Rican context. Namely, I explore how ritual experiences in a nondenominational church and a Afro-Puerto Rican drumming community inform the agency necessary for women to self-construct their identity and resist negative stereotypes of black womanhood in Puerto Rican society.
GDR Area of Study: Persons, Community, and Religious Life
Dissertation Title: “Pragmatic Embodiment: Race, Class, Gender, and Religion in The Puerto Rican Imaginary”
Current Research: I study race, class, gender and sexuality in the Puerto Rican context and the ways black women in religious and nonreligious sites use ritual to inspire resistance against oppressive social ideologies.
Annie Hardison-Moody
Current Status: Research Scholar, Department of 4-H Youth Development and Family and Consumer Sciences, NC State University
Education: B.A, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2000); M.T.S., Vanderbilt Divinity School (2003); Ph.D., Emory University (2010)
GDR Area of study: Persons, Community, and Religious Life
Dissertation Title: “When Religion Matters: A Practical Theological Engagement with Liberian Women’s Narratives and Practices of Healing Post-Conflict”
Current Research in GDR: Annie Hardison-Moody works at the intersections of religion and health, with a focus on gender-based violence, health promotion, parenting, and women's reproductive health. Her recent work with the Faithful Families Eating Smart and Moving More program and Voices into Action: The Families Food and Health Project at NC State University garnered an invitation to the White House, through the Let's Move initiative. She is currently finalizing a manuscript, When Religion Matters: Practicing Healing in the Aftermath of the Liberian Civil War, and along with Claire Bischoff and Elizabeth Gandolfo, co-editing a volume, Mothering Matters: Parenting as Spiritual Practice and Source for Theology (learn more at www.motheringmattersblog.wordpress.com).
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Carolyn Browning Helsel
Current Status: Assistant Professor of Homiletics, Austin Presbyterian Thelological Seminary
Education: B.A., Whitworth University (2001); M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary (2004); Th.M., Princeton Theological Seminary (2010); Ph.D., Emory University (2014)
GDR Academic Project: A Hermeneutic of (Mis)Recognition for Whites Preaching about Racism
GDR Area of Study: Persons, Community and Religious Life (Homiletics)
Dissertation Title: "Mis-Recognizing the Other: White Preachers And the Challenge of Racial Discourse”
Jay Paul Hinds
Current Status: Assistant Professor, Practical Theology, Howard University School of Divinity
Education: B.A., Felician College (2004); M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary (2007); Th.M., Princeton Theological Seminary (2008); Ph.D., Emory University (2013)
GDR Area of Study: Persons, Community, and Religious Life
Dissertation Title: “The Son Will Shine Again: A Treatise at the Dawn of a Revolutionary Black Manhood”
Current Research: Using an interdisciplinary approach, which includes but is not limited to African American literature, psychoanalytic theories (e.g., Classical Freudian, object relations, and Neo-Freudian [à la Eriksonian] theories), and post-structuralist critical theories, I am continuing to research the myriad benefits of what I have named a son-consciousness to the liberative psychosocial development of black men.
Harshita Kamath
Current Status: Assistant Professor of Religion, Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies, Emory University
Education: B.A., Emory University (2004); MTS, Harvard Divinity School (2006); Ph.D., Emory University (2012)
GDR Academic Project: My academic research focused on the construction of gender in classical textual and performance traditions in the south Indian language of Telugu.
GDR Area of study in GDR: West and South Asian Religions
Dissertation Title: “Aesthetics, Performativity, & Performative Maya: Imagining Gender in the Textual and Performance Traditions of Telugu South India"
Current Research: My current research interests include south Indian performance traditions, classical Telugu texts, and the study of gender in South Asian religions.
Michael Karlin
Current Status: Assistant Professor, Life University
Education: B.A., University of Georgia (1989); M.A., Georgia State University (2007); Ph.D., Emory University (2014)
GDR Academic Project: My academic project examines the intersection between psychology and religion in contemporary North American culture through ethnographic research methods.
GDR Area of Study: American Religious Cultures
Dissertation Title: “Cosmology is Psychology: An Ethnographic Study of Ritual Innovation, Therapeutic Culture and Narrative Theory Among Chabad-Lubavitch”
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Layla Karst
Current Status: Assistant Professor, Loylola Marymount University
Education: B.A., Whitworth University (2006); M.Div., University of Notre Dame (2010); Ph.D., Emory University (2018)
GDR Academic Project: My research centers around the development and practice of Christian pilgrimage, examining the historical development of this practice in the Church, the ritual and liturgical experiences of contemporary pilgrims, and the role of pilgrimage in Christian conversion and formation. My broader research interests include the role of ritual, practice, and communication in the human encounter with the divine, the sacramental experience, and the fundamental ideas of revelation, incarnation, and conversion.
GDR Area of Study: Persons, Community and Religious Life (Liturgical Studies)
Dissertation Title: “Reimagining Pilgrimage”
Katherine Givens-Kime
Current Status: Assistant Professor, University of Bern
Education: B.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison (2001); M.Div., Union Theological Seminary, NYC (2005); Ph.D., Emory University (2017)
GDR Academic Project: As a practical theologian with particular capacities in the area of pastoral theology, I engage the rich intersections of homiletics, pastoral care, and ecclesiology. My work grows beneath the scholastic umbrella of theological anthropology, exploring the problems and particularities of multiplicity as it interrupts the hegemonic narratives of singularity, unity, and oneness. Emerging from the scholarly exploration I conducted as a Louisville Institute study grant recipient, my research investigates C.G. Jung’s recently published Red Book as a new song in the choir of theological and cultural voices exploring what it means to Christian and human.
GDR Area of Study: Persons, Community and Religious Life (Pastoral Theology)
Dissertation Title: "Higher Power, Brain Power: An Interpretive Model of Phenomenological Analysis of Spiritual and Religious Characteristics of 12-Step Recovery Models on the Context of the Brain Disease Model of Addiction"
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Ryan Kuratko
Current Status: Chaplain, Canterbury, New York City
Education: Ph.D, Emory University (2018)
GDR Area of Study: Theological Studies
Dissertation Title: "What We See Outside of Us Is Always Connected to What Is Happening Inside of Us: Teresa of Avila and Buddhaghosa on No-Self Practice, Theology, and Oppression"
Justin Latterell
Current Status: Assistant Professor in the Practice of the Sociology of Religion; Director of Faith and Finance, Candler School of Theology, Emory University
Education: B.A., Augustana College (2003); M.Div. Union Theological Seminary, New York (2007); Ph.D., Emory University (2014)
GDR Academic Project: Theories of religion and secularism; religious ethics; and the intersections of religion, law and politics.
GDR Area of Study: Ethics and Society
Dissertation Title: “Law Before Lemon: Religion, Power and the Birth of the Secular Purpose Test, 1815-1971”
Haemin Lee
Current Status: Catalyst for International Evangelism at Presbyterian Church (USA) National Headquarters World Mission
Education: B.A., Yonsei University (2002); M.Div., Harvard Divinity School (2006); Th.M., Candler School of Theology (2007); Ph.D., Emory University (2013)
GDR Academic Project: Projects related to Christian Mission, Evangelism, and International Development
GDR Area of Study: Person, Community and Religious Life (Global Missions)
Dissertation Title: “Christian Mission and International Development: Changing Dynamics of Christian Mission in South Korea”
Emily "Michelle" Ledder
Current Status: Director of Equity and Anti-Racism, Religion and Race, General Commission on Religion and Race, The United Methodist Church
Education: B.A., Eastern Nazarene College (2007); M.Div. Candler School of Theology (2010), Ph.D., Emory University
GDR Academic Project: Working alongside women who are serving long-term prison sentences to create pedagogical methodologies for teaching theological education, generally, and prophetic preaching, specifically.
GDR Area of Study: Persons, Community and Religious Life (Homiletics)
Current Research Interests: Liberative and Subversive Pedagogies; Relationships between Power, Agency, Psychology and Transformation; Restorative Justice within the U.S. Criminal Justice System; Multicultural Practical Theologies; and Practical Theories of Epistemology.
Dissertation Title:
James W. McCarty III
Current Status:
Education: B.A., Pepperdine University (2005); M.A., Claremont School of Theology (2008); Ph.D., Emory University (2014)
GDR Academic Project: The ethics of reconciliation
GDR Area of Study: Ethics and Society
Dissertation Title: “Political Reconciliation: Theology, Human Rights, and Transitional Justice”;
Current Research: I am interested in the role of justice, including human rights, in social and political reconciliation. I am especially interested in racial reconciliation in the United States and political reconciliation after violence. In addition, I am interested in the ethics and practice of conflict transformation and peacebuilding.
Jacob D. Myers
Current Status: Assistant Professor of Homiletics, Columbia Seminary
Education: B.A., Gardner-Webb University (2001); M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary (2005), Ph.D., Emory University (2013)
GDR Academic Project: My academic project drew from homiletical theory and theology into conversation with poststructural theory.
GDR Area of Study: Persons, Community and Religious Life (Homiletics)
Dissertation Title: “Witnessing the Word Erotic: A Philosophical Theology of Proclamation”
Current Research: My current research is focused on the interplay of gender and sexuality on preaching.
Jenn Ortegren
Current Status: Assistant Professor of Religion, Middlebury College
Education: B.A., Nebraska Wesleyan University (2003); M.T.S., Harvard Divinity School (2005), Ph.D., Emory University (2015)
GDR Academic Project: My project examined intersections of religion and class identity in urban India.
GDR Area of Study: West and South Asian Religions
Dissertation Title: “Dharma and Aspiration: The Shifting Religious Worlds of Rajasthani Women.
Current Research: My current research is focused on changes in the religious practices of upwardly-mobile Hindu women in the urban neighborhoods of Udaipur, Rajasthan, India.
Brendan Ozawa de Silva
Current Status: Associate Director, Center for Compassion, Integrity, and Secular Ethics, Life University
Education: B.S.F.S., Georgetown University (1996); M.Phil., University of Oxford (1998); M.T.S., Boston University School of Theology (2001); D.Phil., University of Oxford (2003), Ph.D., Emory University (2015)
GDR Academic Project: My research focuses on what contemplative practices and contemporary findings in cognitive science may have to offer each other in terms of our understanding of the mind, body, and health, particularly with regard to the cultivation of positive emotions such as compassion. I am involved in several current meditation studies in Atlanta and in Japan, and have published recent articles on secular ethics, the mind/body relationship in Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan medicine, the secularization and scientific study of contemplative practices, scientific research on compassion meditation, suicide and mental health in Japan, and the introduction of contemplative practices into education.
GDR Area of Study: Persons, Community and Religious Life
Dissertation Title: "Becoming the Wish-Fulfilling Tree: Compassion and the Transformation of Ethical Subjectivity in the Lojong Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism"
Matthew Lawrence Pierce
Current Status: Business Development Manager at Iredell County Economic Development Corporation
Education: B.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2001); M.Div. Duke Divinity School (2006); Ph.D., Emory University (2018)
Academic Project: My overall interests have two foci: Christian liturgy as moral formation and the impact of race, class, and geography on American Protestant worship preferences and the integration of place theory into theologies of culture toward a more robust understanding and practice of liturgical enculturation. \ Interdisciplinary by nature, my work also draws upon urban studies and urban planning, historical geographic information systems (HGIS), and practice theory. For the past two years I have worked with the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship (and its precursor) on the Atlanta Maps Project (http://disc.library.emory.edu/atlantamaps/).
Area of Study: Persons, Community and Religious Life (Liturgical Studies)
Dissertation Title:
Sarah Farmer Poole
Current Status: Associate Research Scholar, Yale Center for Faith and Culture
Education: B.A., Berea College (2001); M.Div., Candler School of Theology (2008); Ph.D., Emory University (2016)
GDR Academic Project: My research examines the concept of hope as it is operationalized in the lives of marginalized populations, particularly those who experience “confinement”? My research also seeks to gain insight about the ways the practice of art within critical emancipatory pedagogies helps become a conduit of personal and social transformation. Other research interests include psychosocial identity formation, community building and social change and transformative pedagogy. This year, I am a Community Building and Social Change graduate fellow as well as a Religious Practices and Practical Theology fellow.
GDR Area of Study: Person, Community and Religious Life
Dissertation Title: “Hope in Confinement: Exploring Art in Critical Emancipatory Pedagogies”
Melva Sampson
Current Status: Assistant Professor of Preaching and Practical Theology, Wake Forrest University School of Divinity
Education: B.A., Virginia Union University (1994); M.A., Howard University (1997); M.Div., Emory University (2002); Ph.D., Emory University (2017)
GDR Academic Project: I utilize womanist and performance theory within an Afrocentric paradigm to illumine and legitimate alternative ways of knowing and their efficacy for preaching.
GDR Area of Study: Persons, Community, and Religious Life
Dissertation Title: “Knowledge, Performance and the African-Centered Womanist Homiletical Praxis”;
Jessica Mitchell Smith
Current Status: Director of Research and Planning, United Methodist Church, Church and Society
Education: B.A., University of Virginia (2002); M.Div., Emory University, Candler School of Theology (2005); Ph.D., Emory University (2015)
Academic Project: I consider the micro-narratives of three women as they relate to the symbol of the angel to thematize the theological margin in the Christian tradition.
Area of Study: Theological Studies
Dissertation Title: "Creatures of the Dark: A Marginal Theology"; Dissertation Committee: Wendy Farley (chair), Pamela Hall, Thomas G. Long and Michele Schreiber
Current Research: Mourning and laughter in Christian theology, a theological response to detention centers in the United States, and narrative ethics in popular young adult mass fiction.
Josey Snyder
Current Status: Aministrator, Center for Leadership Excellence. North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church; Instructor, Duke Divinity School Continuing Education for Clergy Course of Study Program
Education: B.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2005); M.Div., Candler School of Theology (2009); Ph.D., Emory University (2016)
GDR Area of Study: Hebrew Bible
Dissertation: “Looking Back at Lot's Wife: A Reception-Critical Character Study”
GDR Academic Project: My research focuses on the reception of biblical texts, with particular emphasis on Jewish midrashic interpretation and the interaction between early Jewish, Christian, and Islamic interpretations. I am also interested in the relationship between rabbinic midrash and the more recent phenomenon, sometimes called “modern midrash.” My dissertation focuses on the character of Lot’s wife, considering both early and more recent interpretations. For recent interpretations, I am especially interested in the numerous poems that have been written on this biblical character. I have a B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.Div. from Candler School of Theology at Emory University. For a list of my publications and my CV, please visit my website:http://emory.academia.edu/JoseySnyder.
Rebecca Spurrier
Current Status: Associate Dean for Worship Life; Assistant Professor of Worship, Columbia Theological Seminary
Education: B.A., Calvin College (2007); M.Div., Candler School of Theology (2010); Ph.D., Emory University (2016)
GDR Area of Study: Theological Studies
Dissertation Title: “Works of Love: Beauty and Fragility in a Community of Difference”
GDR Academic Project: an ethnographic study of a Christian church community and the theological struggles and arts through which it weaves difference and disability into the center of its life and work
Current Research: My research engages embodiment theories and disability studies as important resources for theological reflection and liturgical aesthetics. I am committed to the art of ethnography as an approach to the study of embodiment and to the performed theologies and affective dimensions of communal life. My dissertation focuses on a church community in which persons with diagnoses of mental illness are central to the life of the congregation and traces practices within this community that resist models of segregationist charity. I have lived significant parts of my life in the countries of Zambia and Ukraine and attribute my evolving interest in theology, disability, and liturgy to these experiences.
Kyle Tau
Current Status: Ecumenical Staff Officer for Faith & Order and Theological Development, United Methodist Church
Education: B.A., Point Loma Nazarene University (2005); M.T.S., Candler School of Theology (2010); Ph.D., Emory University (2016)
GDR Area of Study: Theological Studies
Dissertation Title: “Ora et Labora: On the Liturgical Reframing of Work”
GDR Academic Project: I worked to explore the relationship between liturgical practices and the moral and political imagination. My dissertation focused on the role of fixed hour daily prayer in the Christian tradition, or the Liturgy of the Hours, in shaping its practitioners in an experience of time that is at odds with the understanding of commodified time that dominates contemporary economic calculations particularly with respect to labor. My goal was to show that daily liturgical prayer can function as a source for critique and transformation of the dehumanizing discipline our global economic structures impose on workers. In other areas I like to explore the use of scripture in theological discernment, the history, meaning and practice of the sacraments particularly in relation to life in the body, and the theology of Hans Frei, Karl Barth, and Hans Urs von Balthasar.
Alexis S. Wells-Oghoghomeh
Current Status: Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, American Religious History and African-American Religious History, Vanderbilt University; Ph.D., Emory University (2015)
Education: B.A., Spelman College (2004); M.Div., Candler School of Theology (2007)
GDR Area of Study: American Religious Cultures
Dissertation Title: “Re/Membering the Sacred Womb: The Sacred Cultures of Enslaved Women in Georgia, 1750-1861”
GDR Academic Project: My research explores the intersections of gender, religion, and enslavement in the 18th and 19th century United States South. In the dissertation, I use the Georgia Lowcountry and Piedmont to discuss the role of religion in the gender identity formation of enslaved peoples in the South and the impact of gendered experiences of enslavement upon the sacred consciousness of enslaved Africans and African-Americans. In addition to African-American Religious History, my teaching areas include American Religious History, 17th-19th Century African-American History, African-Atlantic Religions, and Women and Religion in the U.S.