Full-time Members of the Department of Religious Studies

Dr. G. William Barnard (B.A. Antioch University; M.A. Temple University; Ph.D. University of Chicago) is currently an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies, as well as a University Distinguished Teacher Professor.  His primary areas of research are the comparative philosophy of mysticism, religion and the social sciences, contemporary spirituality, and religion and healing. He teaches a variety of courses: Magic, Myth, and Religion; Mysticism: East and West; Understanding the Self: East and West; Introduction to Primal Religions; Ways of Being Religious; Social-Scientific Study of Religion (at both undergraduate and graduate levels); and Wholeness and Holiness: Religion and Healing Across Cultures. In 2000, he won the Golden Mustang Award for teaching and scholarship, and from 2002-2004 he was a member of SMU's Academy of Distinguished Teachers. He has published Exploring Unseen Worlds: William James and the Philosophy of Mysticism as well as an edited volume, Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism. He has also written many journal articles and book chapters on a variety of topics, such as pedagogy in religious studies, the nature of religious experience, and issues in the psychology of religion. He is currently working on a second monograph, Living Intuitions: Henri Bergson and the Evolution of Mystical Responsiveness.  bbarnard@mail.smu.edu    214-768-2135

Dr. Mark A. Chancey , who assued the chairmanship of the Department in January of 2008, attended the University of Georgia, where he earned a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Religion (1990) and a M.A. in Religion (1992) . He entered Duke University's Graduate Program in Religion in 1993, where he focused on New Testament studies and early Judaism. While at Duke, he participated in excavations in Israel at Sepphoris, an important ancient city three miles from Nazareth. He earned his Ph.D. from Duke in 1999 and joined the faculty of SMU in 2000. His research interests include the Gospels, the Historical Jesus, archaeology and the Bible, and the political and social history of Palestine during the Roman period. His book, The Myth of a Gentile Galilee (Cambridge University Press, 2002), integrates archaeological and literary evidence to demonstrate that first-century C.E. Galilee was overwhelmingly Jewish. He is also the author of a forthcoming monograph, entitled Greco-Roman Culture and the Galilee of Jesus (also Cambridge University Press).  mchancey@mail.smu.edu    214-768-1460

Dr. Richard W. Cogley (B.A., English, Franklin and Marshall College; M.Div., Yale University; Ph.D., Religion, Princeton University) teaches an introductory course on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and well as more advanced undergraduate courses on the history of Christianity in Europe and on religion in America. His scholarly interest is English and American Puritanism. He is the author of John Eliot's Mission to the Indians (Harvard University Press, 1999), and is currently researching a history of Puritan eschatology. Before coming to SMU, he held visiting appointments at North Carolina State University, Loyola Marymount University, and Reed College.  rcogley@mail.smu.edu 214-768-2099

Dr. Jill DeTemple attended Bowdoin College, where she earned a B.A. in Asian Studies with a minor in Religion in 1993. After several years as an agricultural extensionist with the U.S. Peace Corps in Ecuador, she entered Harvard Divinity School and received an M.T.S. in Christianity and Culture in 1999. She entered the graduate program in religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that same year, and completed her Ph.D. in 2005. Her research interests include religiously sponsored development organizations, religions of Latin America, Pentecostalism, and theory and method in the study of religion. detemple@mail.smu.edu 214-768-2102.

Dr. Johan Elverskog (B.A., University of California, Berkeley, 1990; M.A. and Ph.D., Indiana University, 2000) is an assistant professor. He teaches various courses on Asian religions and cultures: Introduction to Buddhism, Introduction to the Hindu Tradition, the Cultural History of Tibet, and Introduction to Eastern Religions, among others. His research focuses on the history of Buddhism in Inner Asia, Mongol intellectual history, and cultural politics during the Qing dynasty. He is the author of Uygur Buddhist Literature, The Jewel Translucent Sutra, and two other books expected to be in print soon, The Pearl Rosary and Our Great Qing.  His numerous articles have appeared in Buddhist Literature, Inner Asia, Ming Studies, and other journals and edited volumes.  He is currently working on a new project, tentatively entitled Urban Nomads, Margarine Buddhism, and the Culture of Mongolian Modernity, 1870-1945. jelversk@mail.smu.edu 214-768-4127.

Dr. Serge Frolov (M.A. and Ph.D. in Modern History, Leningrad University; M.A. and Ph.D. in Religion, Claremont Graduate University) is an assistant professor of Religious Studies and the holder of the Nate and Ann Levine Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies. He teaches introductory courses on the Hebrew Bible and the history of Judaism, as well as advanced undergraduate courses in these and related areas. His current areas of research are biblical hermeneutics and theology, history and religions of the ancient Near East, and Jewish history and thought. Before joining SMU in 2002, he worked at the National Library of Russia and for the Shorter Jewish Encyclopedia in Russian, and also taught at the Open University of Israel. He has published one English-language monograph as well as more than two hundred articles in English and Russian; he has also won the Society of Biblical Literature Regional Scholar Award. sfrolov@mail.smu.edu   214-768-4478

Dr. John C. Lamoreaux (Ph.D., Duke, 1999) teaches courses on eastern and western religions, Islam, the history of theology, theory and method in the study of religion, and a variety of other subjects. His research is focused on the history of Christianity and Islam in the early middle ages.  He has published extensively on patristics, the intellectual history of Islam, and the history of Arab Christianity.  He has written John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus, The Life of Stephen of Mar Sabas, The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation, The Life of Timothy of Kakhushta, and Theodore Abu Qurrah.  His current projects include a second study of Theodore Abu Qurrah, the translation of Galen's medical works into Arabic, and the Arabic accounts of Mary's ascent into heaven.  jclam@mail.smu.edu   214-768-1529

Dr. Steven E. Lindquist (B.A., University of Wisconsin -- Madison, 1994; M.A., University of Chicago, 1998; Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin, 2005) joined the department as Assistant Professor in 2006. Some of the classes that he teaches include Introduction to Eastern Religions, Introduction to Hinduism, and advanced courses in Hindu traditions from ancient to modern. His research focuses on Sanskrit religious literature and he has published articles on topics such as Indian numismatics and riddle-poems in the Upanishads. He is currently editing a volume on South Asian religions. Dr. Lindquist has lived in India approximately five years conducting research, reading Sanskrit and Hindi, and consulting with local scholars. He previously taught at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. slindqui@mail.smu.edu 214-768-2105

Affiliated Faculty of the Department of Religious Studies 

 Dr. Charles E. Curran, Elizabeth Scurlock University Chair of Human Values, Campus Box 317 , SMU, Dallas 75275-0317/ ccurran@mail.smu.edu / 214-768-4073

Dr. Robin W. Lovin, Cary M. Maguire University Chair of Ethics, Campus Box 317, SMU, Dallas, 75275-0317/ rlovin@mail.smu.edu / 214-768-4134

Dr. Joseph B. Tyson, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, Campus Box 202, SMU, Dallas, 75275-0202/ jtyson@mail.smu.edu / 214-768-2105

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