News and memories of DSR alumni and friends.
SUNY Buffalo professor and DSR alum, Alex Green (’13) published an article in Jewish Studies Quarterly in early 2021: “Does God Prefer the Powerful? Reforming the King in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari.” His second book, Power and Progress: Joseph Ibn Kaspi and the Meaning of History (SUNY Press), was published in 2019.
Recent graduate Dr. Sean Capener won third place in the University of Chicago’s Race and Religion Essay Contest, with "De casu angelorum: Damnation as a Political-Theological Problematic." Sean will join a workshop at the U Chicago Divinity School to develop the paper for publication.
We were saddened to learn of the death of Dr. John Weldon Parrish, who passed away on May 5, 2021 at his residence in Alabama.
John began his PhD studies at the Department for the Study of Religion and completed his PhD in Religious Studies at the University of Alberta, where he had also done his MA. He also held a BA in Religious Studies from the University of Alabama, and an AS in Psychology at Northeast Alabama Community College.
His dissertation, Re-Cognizing Paul (2020) was completed under the supervision of Professor Willi Braun, a graduate of the DSR, and made a brilliant case for understanding Paul as engaged in spirit and ecstatic practices. He proposed to understand the political significance of Paul’s “resurrection language” by comparing the Corinthian situation with the American Indian Ghost Dance of 1870 as it developed among the Paiute on the Walker River Reservation in Nevada.
John had numerous articles published in scholarly journals and anthologies and had presented his research frequently at the annual Society of Biblical Literature Conferences.