PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION NEWS
From the Department Head’s Desk
Changing Times, Changing Curricula
Volume 2, Issue no. 3
A curriculum is not something
that we perfect and never
have to revise again. It is a
dynamic and ever-changing
process—responding to
changes in the world around
us, to the needs of the
students, and to the skills and expertise of the faculty.
In this issue . . .
Pia Antolic-Piper will be
joining the philosophy faculty
in the fall. Along with Scott
Girdner and Ingrid Lilly, one
third of the department faculty
in the fall will be new.
2
For the fall semester, the department has made some important
curricular changes. The religious studies program has been
slightly revised and developed a new senior capstone course.
This course will allow students to demonstrate the depth and
breadth of what they have learned through a culminating project.
The philosophy program has developed three new introductory,
General Education courses that will begin in the fall. All the
courses have the primary title of “Enduring Questions,” but each
has a separate focus: PHIL 101 (Truth and Relativism), PHIL 102
(The Good and the Beautiful), and PHIL 103 (The Committed
Life). These new courses are just the beginning of a dramatic
curriculum revision that will produce a completely new program
for philosophy majors and minors beginning Fall 2010.
Dr. John Thatamanil from
Vanderbilt University came to the
department to give a public
address.
3
WKU students
attend major
Biblical studies
conference in
Memphis.
3
Eric Bain-Selbo
Department Head
Congratulations Class of 2009!
Spring brings not only the joy of warm weather and
blossoming flowers, but the celebration of the
graduation for many of our fine students. To all those
listed below, we congratulate you on your academic
success and wish you the best in your future
endeavors. Please keep in touch.
Bailey, Ryan Boyd, Nathaniel Chetelat, Heath Dame,
David Dewhirst, John Dix, David Eagin, Rachel
Evans, Pharris Garcia, Daniel Hibdon, Matthew
Jones, Sarah Kirwan, Rachel Moorman, Ashlie
Pitcock, Kelli Storm, Jamie Tulenko, and Kalleigh
Turnmyre.
Philosophy Majors: Ryan Bailey, Susan Carson,
Crystal Harrison, Eric Isbell, and Scott Triplett.
Religious Studies Minors: Chelsea Beville, Lacey
Blankenship, Eric Isbell, Susan Laun, Terry Maggert,
Rachel Mosley, Lisa Petty, Keshia Porter, Michelle
Reynolds, Richard Sanders, Jacob Sensenig, Terry
Nicholas, and Emily Wilsford.
Philosophy Minors: Tara Dunnavant, David Eagin,
Taryn Hagan, and Elizabeth Mackey.
Religious Studies Majors: Lindsay Allen, Ryan
Pr
hi
Ri
di
Li
Philosophy and Religion News
Page 2
Pia Antolic Piper and Ingrid Lilly to Join Faculty in the Fall
The Department of Philosophy and Religion will be enhanced greatly by the
arrival in the fall of Pia Antolic-Piper and Ingrid Lilly.
Dr. Pia Antolic-Piper specializes in medieval philosophy, and will teach
courses in ancient and medieval philosophy as well as others. In the fall she
will teach the initial offering of Philosophy 102 (Enduring Questions: The
Good and the Beautiful). She completed her dissertation in 2006 at GoetheUniversity, focusing on Roger Bacon’s commentaries on Aristotle. A revision
of her dissertation is forthcoming from the German publisher Akademie
Verlag.
Ms. Ingrid Lilly specializes in Hebrew scripture, and will teach courses in
that subject as well as Hebrew language and Judaism. She is completing her
dissertation at Emory University, focusing on the text of Ezekiel. She has a
M.A. in religion from Yale Divinity School and a B.S. in physics from Gordon
College. She has spent considerable time studying and working at
archeological sites in Israel, and will be developing similar opportunities for
our students.
A hearty welcome to both Dr. Antolic-Piper and Ms. Lilly!
Pia Antolic-Piper
completed her doctoral
work at Goethe-University
in Germany, and currently
is in a post-doctoral
position at St. Louis
University.
Religion Students Work on Documentary About Uganda
For many students, the holiday break between fall
and spring semesters is a time to rest and relax or
perhaps earn a few extra dollars. But that’s not what
religion majors Alex Fortson and Kristen Houser
did. Instead, they went to Uganda to research and
obtain footage for a very special documentary
project. Upon returning, Mr. Fortson provided this
report:
This past winter break Kristen Houser and I spent one
month in the east African nation of Uganda working on a
multimedia documentary on street children, child soldiers,
HIV/AIDS victims, prostitution, and their connections to
the street life of children in northern Uganda. We spent
Uganda is bordered by Kenya in the east and the Democratic
our time in Lira, which is a district of nearly a million
Republic of the Congo in the west.
people. During our stay in a local orphanage called
Saving Grace in Uganda we conducted photo stories and video interviews on a myriad of aforementioned people for the
documentary entitled “Sons Like the Dust.” Kristen and I are currently working on post production and hope to finish
the documentary [soon] . . .. We had a wonderful experience and were able to initiate a great deal of social change for the
people we were photographing. Many of the street children in our documentary are now in school and one has even
moved off the street and into the orphanage. This is largely a result of our work and, of course, the grace of SGIU.
The documentary soon will be available at www.alexanderfortson.com. Funding for this project was partly
provided by the Department of Philosophy and Religion, with thanks to alumni and friends who generously
have donated funds to support student work like this documentary.
Philosophy and Religion News
Dr. John Thatamanil Gives Public Lecture
Philosophy and religious studies
students and faculty were treated to
an thought-provoking lecture by Dr.
John Thatamanil on April 15.
Approximately 50 people were on
hand to hear his talk, “The Trouble
with ‘Religion’: Theology of Religious
Pluralism and Its Struggles with a
Thorny Category.”
Dr. Thatamanil is an assistant professor in the Divinity School
at Vanderbilt University. He is working on his second book,
Religious Diversity After “Religion”: Rethinking Theologies of
Religious Pluralism (Fordham University Press), and his talk
addressed some of the issues to be worked out in that
manuscript. His first book is entitled The Immanent Divine: God,
Creation, and the Human Predicament. An East-West Conversation
(Fortress Press, 2006).
Religious Studies Students Attend
Biblical Studies Meeting
Six religious studies students travelled to Memphis in April
to attend the Qumran, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Biblical
Interpretation Conference. It was a unique opportunity to
learn from an incredible roster of internationally recognized
scholars in the field. Mr. Ryan Stokes, Instructor in Religious
Studies, organized and accompanied the students. Funds
were provided by the generous donations of alumni to the
department.
From left to right:
Emanuel Tov (Hebrew
U., Jerusalem), Tommy
Johnson (WKU), Taylor
Hughey (WKU), James
C. VanderKam (Notre
Dame), Chase Thompson
(WKU), Lawrence
Schiffman (New York
U.), David Eagin
(WKU), Nate Chetelat
(WKU), Ryan Stokes
(WKU), and Ryan Smith
(WKU).
Page 3
Student and
alumni news
Taylor Hughey, junior philosophy and
religious studies major, presented “xxx” at
the annual meeting of the Popular Culture
Association/American Culture Association.
This year’s meeting was in New Orleans. His
paper was well received, and he also chaired
another session of the Philosophy and Popular
Culture area.
Travis Plamp, senior philosophy major, will
be spending Fall 2009 studying in Japan as
part of WKU study abroad program at Kansai
Gaidai. He will be studying language and
culture.
Several students from the department or
students working with faculty from the
department participated in the 2009 Student
Research Conference at WKU. They included
(with faculty mentor) Colleen Stewart’s
“Memory Mysticism in Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind (Dr. Michael Seidler), Chelsea
Beville’s “Time and Beyond Time” (Dr. Joseph
Trafton), Corey Smith’s “An Exposition of
Saint Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge” (Dr.
Arvin Vos), and Lark Digges-Elliott’s
“Preconceived and Embryonic Notions” (Dr.
Michael Seidler).
Alumnus Kurt Reesman has joined the
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Air
Safety Foundation (AOPA ASF) lecturing
circuit. This includes traveling around the
country talking about different aspects of
aviation safety to crowds of pilots that are
anxious to fly better and safer.
Alumnus Luke Harlow has accepted a tenuretrack position at Oakland University in
Michigan. He currently is finishing his Ph.D. in
history at Rice University.
Alumnus Angela (Fairbanks) Carpenter has
accepted an offer to enter the Ph.D. program in
New Testament at Notre Dame University.
___________________
Please send any student or alumni
news to eric.bain-selbo@wku.edu.
Other Faculty News
Dr. Eric Bain-Selbo, associate professor and department head,
published “Ecstasy, Joy, and Sorrow: The Religious Experience of
Southern College Football” in The Journal of Religion and Popular
Culture, vol. XX (Fall 2008). The article can be accessed at
www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/. In April, he also presented “Popular
Culture and the Denigration of the Self” at the annual meeting of
the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association’s
meeting in New Orleans and “Sacrifice in a Post-Moral Society” at
the 5th Biennial Symposium on Religion and Politics at Calvin
College in Michigan.
Dr. Bella Mukonyora, assistant professor of religion, will be
visiting South Africa in June 2009 as a recipient of an
award given by Plowshares Institute to a group of scholars
planning to meet as the Nagel Traveling Seminar on “Public
Theology: The South African Experience.” She will take part in a
variety of workshops focusing on topics carefully chosen to draw
attention to the problems that South Africa faces today, including
Human Rights, Democracy, Globalization, the AIDS Pandemic, and
Environmental Injustice.
Dr. Jeffrey Samuels, associate professor of religion, presented
“Debating Monastic Vocation: The Influence of External Dynamics
on Visions of Buddhism” at the annual meeting of the Association
for Asian Studies. This summer, Dr. Samuels is heading to Malaysia
to begin work on a new book project. He will be conducting
research on Theravada Buddhist communities with the goal of
writing a social history of Theravada Buddhism in Malaysia.
Besides receiving a research startup grant from the university, he
received a general faculty fellowship to launch this new research
effort.
Mr. Ryan Stokes, instructor of religion, published “’The Devil
Made David Do It... Or Did He?’ The Nature, Identity, and Literary
Origins of the Satan in 1 Chronicles 21:1” in the Journal of Biblical
Literature, 128 (2009): 91-106.
Dr. Adrian Switzer, assistant professor of philosophy,
presented a paper entitled, “Laughter as Affect: Gaiety and
Interpretation in Nietzsche” at the American Comparative
Literature Association (ACLA) annual meeting at Harvard
University in March. In May he will present the paper “The
Anxious Voice of Unreason: Reading Freud with Foucault” at the
Society of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture
(EPTC) at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. In addition, he
has an article coming out in the Spring 2009 issue of the
International Philosophy Quarterly entitled “The Unpopular
Work of a Scientific Metaphysics.” Finally, Dr. Switzer continued
his involvement with the European Studies Fellowship at the
Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory University in March and April
as a seminar participant/returning fellow.
Dr. Joseph Trafton, professor of religion, gave a public
presentation on the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Bowling Green Barnes
& Noble on March 19. The audience was standing room only. It
was sponsored by the WKU Libraries. Check out a podcast of the
talk at www.wku.edu/library/podcast/.
Dr. Scott Aikin, adjunct instructor in philosophy, has been
hired to an instructor position at Vanderbilt University. This
spring he presented “Religious Pluralism, Exclusivism, and
Intelligible Third Options: Nicholas of Cusa's De Pace Fidei” at
the MidSouth Philosophy Conference in Memphis with Jason
Aleksander of St. Xavier University. He also published
“Pragmatism, Experience, and the Given" in Human Affairs,
“Three Objections to the Epistemic Theory of Argument” in
Argumentation and Advocacy, and “Don't Fear the Regress” in
THINK.
As you consider your contribution to the New Century of Spirit campaign for Western Kentucky University, please remember that you can
designate your gift to the Philosophy and Religion Department. Your contributions are critical to the life of the department and its students.
Philosophy and Religion News
Department of Philosophy and Religion
Western Kentucky University
1906 College Heights Blvd.
Bowling Green, KY 42101