It’s been a while since we posted, in large part because we have been busy. Here’s a snippet of some of what the Religion faculty have been up to! And, as always, be sure to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for some real-time updates.

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In January, Prof. Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst was a speaker at an international workshop on Authority in Islam held in New Delhi, India. It brought American, European, and Indian scholars together and will be published as a book, soon.

As you likely heard, Prof. Vicki Brennan won the 2018-2019 Dean’s Lecture Award, an acknowledgement of her significant research and pedagogical contributions to the field and UVM. The Award is described as:

The series was established in 1991 as a way to recognize and honor colleagues in the College of Arts and Sciences who have consistently demonstrated the ability to translate their professional knowledge and skill into exciting classroom experiences for their students — faculty who meet the challenge of being both excellent teachers and highly respected professionals in their own discipline. The Award is a celebration of the unusually high quality of our faculty and has become an important and treasured event each semester.

https://www.uvm.edu/cas/deans_and_full_professor_lecture_series_news_and_updates

In January, Prof. Vicki Brennan gave the Dean’s Lecture. Her talk was titled “Exhibiting the Sacred: An Ethnography of Spirited Things.”

Breaking news includes that Prof. Vicki Brennan has just been named an inaugural fellow for the Luce Foundation-sponsored project Sacred Writes! This project aims to connect scholars of religion to various publics beyond their classrooms; Prof. Brennan will join an impressive cohort of leaders in the field of religion for a week-long intensive training session on public scholarship.

And, departmentally, we are excited to say that our newest initiative was recently passed by the Board of Trustees! We are launching an Undergraduate Certificate in Religious Literacy, the first of its kind in the nation. It is a program developed to address student demand for Religion courses beyond a major or minor; the Certificate has a related brand-new course “Religious Literacy,” currently in its first iteration. Stay tuned for more!