PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION NEWS From the Department Head’s Desk

A Very Busy Year

The end of the academic year always means having to say goodbye (we hope only “see you later”) to the many students who enliven our department and our teaching. Congratulations to all of the following students.

Philosophy majors: Thomas Bullen, Gregory Capillo, Travis Plamp, and Edward Rogers.

Religious Studies majors: Ashley Amos, Cole Bodkin, Sarah Ellen Boswell, Carley Brooks, Garrett Brown, Kaitlin Christian, Garrett Craig, Samantha Crowe, Jessica Curtis, Jake Davis, Daniel Hassell, Eric Huggins, Matthew Hughes, Kerry Markham, Harold Maxwell, Anne Miller, Christopher Obermeyer, Lauren Pruden, Brian Sergent, Derek Shelton, Seth

Smallwood, David Speth, William Taylor, Chase Thompson, and Cody Walls.

Philosophy minors: Albert Cesare, Jake Davis, Holly Irwin, Clare Lovekamp, Benjamin Lowery, Nathan Salazar, Ryan Tyler, and Whitney Waller.

Religious Studies minors: Thomas Clark, Emily Cooper, Jordan Eagin, Jacob Glover, Chase Goff, Andrew Hays, Laura Hess, Clay Hodges, Michael Laws, Caleb Shrum, Jenna Smith, Ryan Turtle, and Ineka Walker.

Many thanks to all of these students. Your participation in our classes and in our programs has added greatly to our work.

Congratulations to the Class of 2010

Volume 3, Issue no. 3 MAY 2010

In this issue . . .

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Students hit the road to enhance their studies

Dr. Jeffrey Samuels publishes a new book on Buddhist monasticism

Presidential historian Richard Norton discusses “Our Lincoln” as part

Time flies when you’re having fun. It was a very fast year. In addition to the excellent teaching of our faculty, their impressive scholarship, and the exciting work of our students, the department also had some impressive collaborative achievements that will dramatically change what we do.

The Philosophy program completely revised its curriculum, including adding many new courses. The Religious Studies program, in consultation with departments across campus, developed a new major in Asian Religions and Cultures and helped in a significant revision of the Asian Studies minor. Visit our website to find information on all of these important changes (www.wku.edu/philosophy).

In addition, the Religious Studies program has developed a new M.A. program in Religious Studies. The program has been approved by Potter College, and will be reviewed by the Graduate Council in May. If approved, it will be implemented during the fall semester 2011.

Indeed, it was a very busy year.

Eric Bain-Selbo, Department Head of Philosophy and Religion

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Learning on the Road Students Head Off Campus to Develop as Thinkers and Scholars

Left: Students Evan Scharlow, Andrew Bergman, Jonathan Spence, Chelsea Lamb, Sarah Kapley, and Emily Fox at St. Meinrad Monastery in Indiana. The students visited the monastery with Dr. Jeffrey Samuels as part of his Buddhist/Christian monasticism course.

Above: Philosophy student Derrick Johnson is headed to the Carnegie Mellon Summer School in Logic and Formal Epistemology in June. He is one of only 30 students selected for the program.

Left: Philosophy students Jacob Thomas and Derrick Johnson went to Kennesaw State University in Georgia to present papers at its undergraduate philosophy conference. They were accompanied by Dr. Cassandra L. Pinnick.

Above: Philosophy students Eddie Rogers, Justin Ankenbauer, Kevin Reel, Kyle Green, and Dr. Adrian Switzer wait for the train in Chicago. A dozen students accompanied Dr. Switzer to visit art museums as part of his aesthetics course.

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In this important ethnography of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Dr. Jeffrey Samuels, associate professor of religious studies, takes an unprecedented look at how emotion determines and influences the commitments that laypeople and monastics make to each other and to the Buddhist religion in general. By focusing on “multimoment” histories, Samuels highlights specific junctures in which ideas about recruitment, vocation, patronage, and institution-building are dynamically negotiated and refined. Positing a nexus between aesthetics and affect, he illustrates not only how aesthetic responses trigger certain emotions, but also how personal and shared emotions, at the local level, shape notions of beauty. Dr. Samuels uses the voices of informants to reveal the delicately negotiated character of lay-monastic relations and temple management. His work breaks new ground in that it answers questions about Buddhist emotions and the constitutive roles they play in social life and religious practice through a close, poignant look at small-scale temple and social networks. Throughout, Dr. Samuels makes the case for the need to account for emotions in making the behavior of religious participants and practitioners intelligible.

Drawing on a decade of fieldwork that includes numerous interviews as well as an examination of written and visual sources, Attracting the Heart conveys the manner in which Buddhists describe their own histories, experiences, and encounters as they relate to the formation and continuation of Buddhist monastic culture in contemporary Sri Lanka.

New Book on Buddhist Monasticism Student and alumni news

Christopher Obermeyer, a graduating religious studies student, has been accepted to the doctoral program in Biological Sciences at George Washington University. Mr. Obermeyer is receiving an impressive scholarship package from GWU, worth approximately $300,000.

Each spring the Department of Philosophy and Religion recognizes three students for their exceptional work in philosophy or religious studies. This year, the winners are Sarah Ellen Boswell (Excellence in Scholarship in Religious Studies), Gregory Capillo (Excellence in Scholarship in Philosophy), and Leigh St. Charles (the Larry D. Mayhew Book Scholarship winner for her work in philosophy).

Two philosophy students presented papers at this year’s WKU Student Research Conference. Eddie Rogers (mentored by Dr. Eric Bain-Selbo) presented “Concepts of Self: Science and Buddhism” and Will Simpson (mentored by Dr. Michael Seidler) presented “Particularism and Defining Morality.”

Corey Smith, philosophy graduate from 2009, has been offered a full-tuition scholarship to attend Ave Maria School of Law.

Katherine Hale, religious studies graduate from 2009, has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study in Australia.

Daniel Tallent, religious studies graduate from 2009, will be entering the masters program in religious studies at the University of Missouri. He is receiving a full tuition scholarship as well as a teaching assistant stipend.

Sarah Ellen Boswell, religious studies graduate this May, has received a full-tuition scholarship to attend Case Western Law School.

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Please send any student or alumni news to eric.bain-selbo@wku.edu.

At its January board meeting, the Society for Values in Higher Education named Dr. Eric Bain-Selbo the next Executive Director of the organization. SVHE began in 1922, and has been dedicated to the promoting the study of religion (in its earlier years) and values education (more recently) in colleges and universities throughout the country. The organization holds an annual summer meeting, administers various grants related to work in higher education, and has published the interdisciplinary journal Soundings since 1968. This year’s annual meeting is in Portland, Oregon, focusing on the moral dimensions of sustainability.

Dr. Bain-Selbo was nominated for membership in 2000, and has served on the Board of Directors since 2007. He also is a member of the Editorial Board of Soundings.

Dr. Bain-Selbo Named Next Executive Director of SVHE

Philosophy and Religion News

Department of Philosophy and Religion Western Kentucky University

1906 College Heights Blvd. Bowling Green, KY 42101

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.

Dr. Alan Anderson, professor of philosophy and religion, spoke about his Civil Rights Movement experience and research to students in the WKU’s Gatton Academy in February and to more than 150 eighth graders in Franklin in early April. Dr. Eric Bain-Selbo, associate professor and department head, presented “The Politics of the Romanticization of Popular Culture, or, Going Ga-Ga Over Pop Culture: A Critical Theory Assessment” at the 40th annual meeting of the Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association. The meeting was March 31-April 3 in St. Louis. He also participated in a panel (along with Dr. Anthony Harkins from WKU’s Department of History) entitled “’Why Is This Course So Damn Hard?’: College Students and the Pedagogy of Popular Culture.” Dr. Scott Girdner, assistant professor of religion, served on a panel entitled “Islam and Social Responsibility” here at WKU. In April he spoke at the Islamic Center of Bowling Green in conjunction with the screening of “Hope for Creation” as part of Earth Day activities. Also in April, Dr. Girdner spoke at a religious awareness event on campus. This summer he will be busy as a

participant in a National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar entitled “Freewill and Human Perfection in Medieval Jewish Philosophy.” The seminar is very much related to his current research, which he will continue throughout the summer with the support of a New Faculty Research Scholarship from WKU. Ingrid Lilly, instructor in religion, successfully defended her dissertation at Emory University. The dissertation is entitled “Papyrus 967: A Variant Literary Edition of Ezekiel.” She will be awarded her doctorate this month. Dr. Tripp York, adjunct instructor, has published the children’s book Donkeys and Kings . . . and Other “Tails” of the Bible (Resource Publications, 2010). The book is illustrated by Zak Upright. This is Dr. York’s fourth book.

Other Faculty News

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Donkeysand kingsAnd Other “Tails” of the Bible

Tripp YorkIllustrations by Zak Upright

What do talking donkeys, fasting lions, and wolves playing with sheep have in common? !ey are all found in the Bible. Author Tripp York and illustrator Zak Upright bring to life eight different stories about animals as discovered in Scripture. York spins a different account on these stories (such as the flood, Jonah, as well as Daniel and the lion’s den), by attempting to imagine what it might mean to understand these narra-tives from the perspective of the animals. !ough the short stories in this collection are written for children, adults will take much from them as they attempt to provoke the readers to new ways of understanding some of the most popular stories in the Bible.

“With this book Tripp York participates in that venerable ‘truth-by-parable’ Christian tradition, in which sage storytelling trumps both clever systematic logic and avalanches of information. !e literary genre may be ‘fiction,’ yet York’s non-human eye-witnesses reveal again the genius of the biblical narra-tive. Readers are, therefore, invited to see once more the scandalous biblical message-a gospel too ‘absurd’ for the self-assured, too ‘weak’ for the self-reliant, and too ‘unsophisticated’ for the self-righteous.”—RICHARD C. GOODE, Lipscomb University

“In the playful spirit of Aesop, and with a touch of Lewis’s ‘deeper magic,’ Tripp York imaginatively glimpses the eternal through this strangely familiar menagerie of talking animals— fellow creatures in our great journey with God.

York’s quirky, contemporary narrative voice and his creative openness to the teleology of God’s ubiquitous movement among His creation offer readers a rare and meaningful opportunity to reconsider the power of God’s Word with fresh eyes and responsive hearts.”—JEFFREY D. FRAME, Trevecca Nazarene University

Tripp Yorkis Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University, in Elon, North Carolina. He is the author of !e Purple Crown: !e Politics of Martyrdom (2007) and Living on Hope while Living in Babylon (Wipf & Stock, 2009).

978-1-60608-940-8 78 pp. / $11 / paper