Michelle Voss Roberts is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.

Gretchen Wegner is an academic coach for high school students, an InterPlay leader and performer, and the inventor of MuseCubes.

G. William Barnard is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

Frank Rogers, Jr. is Associate Professor of Spiritual Formation and Narrative Pedagogy at the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California.

Steven J. Gelberg is a fine art photographer in Richmond, California. He has published nine volumes of work.

Sandra F. Selby is associate pastor of Furnace Street Mission in Akron and adjunct instructor at Methodist Theological School in Ohio.

Elizabeth Shively is a doctoral candidate in New Testament in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Barry Stephenson teaches in the Religion and Culture Department at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Heather Stoltz is a professional quilter and the Community Services Coordinator at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City.

Robyn Neville is a third-year Ph.D. student in Historical Studies in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. She is also an ordained Episcopal priest.

Lance Pape is an ordained minister who served churches in Alabama and New York before beginning his graduate studies in the Person, Community, and Religious Life course of study in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University.

Leah Lewis is a doctoral student in the Person, Community, and Religious Life course of study of Emory University’s Graduate Division of Religion.

Harshita Mruthinti Kamath is a doctoral student at Emory University in the West and South Asian Religions course of study in the Graduate Division of Religion.

Arthi Devarajan is a doctoral candidate at Emory University in the West and South Asian Religions course of study in the Graduate Division of Religion.

Rebekah Eklund is an ordained minister who served a church in Minneapolis before beginning studies in New Testament and theology/ethics in the Th.D. program at Duke Divinity School.

Montana Miller is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. A folklorist and ethnographer, she specializes in youth culture.

Laurie Occhipinti is an Associate Professor of cultural anthropology at Clarion University of Pennsylvania.

Jana Strukova is Assistant Professor of the Chair in Christian Education & Formation at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. Her research concerns the faith-based transformative practices that nurture and sustain families and youth in their life of faith.

Brian J. Mahan is the former Director of Religious Education at Candler School of Theology and former faculty member of the Graduate Division of Religion of Emory University. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, Kim.

Jillian Schedneck holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from West Virginia University and is currently working on a travel memoir about her experiences in the United Arab Emirates titled "Abu Dhabi Days, Dubai Nights." Her creative work has been published in literary journals such as The Common Review, Brevity, and Fourth River.

Josh Borkin has worked in interfaith youth contexts for over 10 years with both the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions and Auburn Theological Seminary. Josh currently teaches at The City College of New York and plans to receive his doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University in the fall of 2009.

Susannah Morris is a sophomore at Furman University, majoring in classics and religion.

Natalie Stadnick is a junior at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA, where she studies Philosophy.

Richard Voelz is a PhD candidate in Homiletics and Liturgics at Vanderbilt University currently writing his dissertation entitled "A Youthful Homiletic: A Practical Theological Examination of the Relationship between Preaching and Adolescents." He is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), managing editor of the journal Homiletic, and previously served in parish youth ministry.

Sonia Narang is a freelance reporter and filmmaker in New York City.

Lucia Hulsether, Agnes Scott College '11, is double-majoring in Religious Studies and Sociology/Anthropology. She is interested in how religion intersects with issues of identity and power, especially in relation to gender, race, and migration in the US. She has worked as a research assistant on a Ford Foundation project that studied how religion influences interethnic and interracial relations around new immigration to the US south. In 2009 a version of the paper published herein won the undergraduate paper award at the Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion conference.

Ted A. Smith is an assistant professor of ethics and society at Vanderbilt Divinity School, where he directs the Program in Theology and Practice. He is the author of The New Measures: A Theological History of Democratic Practice.

Howell Belser received her B.A. in English from Emory University in 2002 and her M.T.S from Pacific School of Religion in 2004. She has returned to Emory and is a doctoral student in the American Religious Cultures course of study of the Graduate Division of Religion. Her academic interests include lived religion, popular culture, gender/queer studies, utopian fiction, performance theory, social change movements, and pedagogy. Her current work explores the transformative potential of queer utopian science fiction and subversive queer performance art.

Matthew Bersagel Braley is a doctoral student in the Ethics and Society course of study of the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. He works at the intersection of religion and global health in Africa and the African Diaspora. He is a member of the African Religious Health Assets Program, an international network of scholars and practitioners employing assets-based development approaches to understand the contribution of religion in healthcare. At Emory he served as executive director of Southern Truth and Reconciliation, a university-community partnership highlighting reconciliation practices of communities confronting legacies of racial violence. Prior to graduate studies, he directed youth programs in churches and other non-profit organizations.

Letitia Campbell is a doctoral student in the Ethics and Society course of study of the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. She is interested in the history of Christian social ethics, social and political theory, and the new rhetoric of empire. Before beginning doctoral studies, Campbell lived in New York City, where she was part of the program staff at Auburn Theological Seminary and taught at Manhattan College and Columbia University. She has worked as a newspaper reporter, and she brings experience in faith-based organizing and anti-racism facilitation to her scholarly work. She has also worked in youth, young adult, and campus ministry, and is a candidate for ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Courtney T. Goto is a doctoral candidate in the Person, Community and Religious Life course of study of the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. Her dissertation, entitled "Artistic Play: Seeking the God of the Unexpected," sets forth a practical theology of play through art, and explores issues of body, imagination, teaching and learning for adults through two case studies. In the first case, Goto investigates how participants of InterPlay, based in Oakland, California, are creating selves by engaging in improvisational theater, movement, and vocal music. In the second case, Goto compares the ways in which a Japanese-American congregation in Sacramento, California discovers connections between faith and culture through play, Japanese artifacts, and aesthetics. Performance theory and object-relations aesthetics serve as theoretical lenses.

David King is a doctoral student in the Historical Studies course of study of the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. Trained as a scholar of American religions, he employs ethnographic and historical methods to explore the complexity of twentieth-century American evangelicalism, depicting its diverse practices and ideologies. King's current work examines the evolving understandings of mission and public policy within evangelical non-governmental organizations. As an ordained minister, King is also committed to researching and responding to issues of practice within local communities of faith. His recent work has followed the formation of a Hispanic storefront congregation, as well as the short-term missions program of a suburban megachurch.

Amy Levad is a doctoral candidate in the Ethics and Society course of study whose research explores religious efforts to reform criminal justice systems in the US. Her dissertation, entitled “The Moral Imagination of Restorative Justice,” places the intellectual history of virtue ethics in dialogue with ethnographic research in six restorative justice programs in Colorado. Levad's dissertation also explores how participation in restorative justice practices can change the ways communities imagine and respond to the ethical challenges that arise in the aftermath of crime. This work fits within Levad's larger projects of investigating the contributions of religious traditions to criminal justice theories and practices and the role of moral imagination in responding creatively to other social problems.

Lerone Martin is a PhD candidate at Emory in the Graduate Division of Religion's course of study in American Religious Cultures. His research interests include the history of American religion and culture and twentieth-century African American cultural practices. Martin's dissertation, entitled “Selling to the Souls of Black Folk,” is an historical analysis of religious commodification and mass mediated religion in the United States and its relationship to capitalist consumerism. Desiring to utilize education for empowerment, Martin has become involved in various community education projects, serving as an educational consultant for continuing education and recidivism at New York's Sing Sing State Prison and teaching at Georgia's Metro State Prison.

Samira Mehta is a doctoral candidate in the American Religious Cultures course of study. Her dissertation focuses on Christian-Jewish interfaith families in the late twentieth century United States, a project in which she explores the dynamics of familial religious practice and experience through the lens of cultural history. Mehta's project translates conversations about pluralism in American religion to familial religious practices, and examines the cultural construction of Christian-Jewish interfaith families through a close examination of popular culture. The ethnographic portion of her dissertation involves interviewing families about their own religious practices, with particular analytic attention paid to areas of innovation. Her project also explores dynamics of community outreach to interfaith families.

A PhD candidate in the American Religious Cultures course of study, Donna S. Mote is an ethnographer of religious cultures and practices. The focus of her dissertation project is the religious culture of Shingleroof Camp Meeting in Henry County, Georgia, and she is currently at work on a documentary film about Shingleroof. Much of Mote's work involves identifying and analyzing implicit practices of ancestor veneration in US contexts. She places such practices in conversation with more explicit ancestor-venerating practices in non-US religious cultures, such as that of Obon, the Buddhist Festival of the Dead, in Japan. Animating her work are a focus on the interplay of practices, memory, bodies, and place and an interest in new approaches to religious places and spaces.

An ordained Episcopal priest with practical experience in youth ministry and Christian education, Robyn Neville is a doctoral student in the Historical Studies course of study. Her research interests include contemplative theology and bodily practices in historical Christian monastic traditions, as well as the role of the exemplar in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon hagiography. Neville also studies the functions of gender and sexuality in medieval Christian institutions, and the development of new pedagogical practices in the teaching of historical theology in seminary contexts. A candidate for Emory’s Graduate Certificate in Medieval Studies, Neville is a concentrator in the Initiative in Religious Practices and Practical Theology.

Brendan Ozawa-de Silva is a doctoral student in West and South Asian Religions in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. His studies focus on the scientific exploration of meditation and the emerging dialogue between cognitive neuroscience and Buddhist contemplative theory and practice. Three main aims direct his work. First, Ozawa-de Silva hopes to develop a greater understanding of mind/body interaction through the interdisciplinary and comparative study of contemplative practices. Second, he seeks to discover new clinical interventions, particularly for the treatment of mental illness. Finally, Ozawa-de Silva works to establish curricula that facilitate the cultivation of emotional and social intelligence.

John Senior is a doctoral candidate in the Ethics and Society course of study and a concentrator in the Initiative in Religious Practices and Practical Theology. His dissertation explores the construction of Christian identity and moral agency in and through forms of political activism. Senior's interests also include the relationship between theological education in the seminary context and diverse practices of ministry.

Katy Shrout is a doctoral candidate in American religious history and culture. Her dissertation addresses the role of the sacred in the commercialization of white wedding practices, 1840-1970. Drawing upon books, diaries, advertisements, church materials, films, photographs and material artifacts, she investigates how the wedding has served as a site of sacred significance for women, depending upon and reshaping meanings derived from religious institutions and the marketplace. She is interested in what constitutes a religious practice in modernity, and how consumer culture has competed with, fed upon, and sustained American religion. Shrout also has a masters' in documentary film from Berkeley, and produced a documentary screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002.

Josh Thomas is a doctoral candidate in the Person, Community and Religious Life course of study focusing on religious education with youth and young adults. His dissertation will draw on work with Kids4Peace, an organization that gathers Jewish, Christian, and Muslim youth from Jerusalem for intensive summer camps. Evaluating the impact of this program, Thomas will explore the theologies and religious practices required to support young people in efforts toward peace. He also studies religion and sexuality, developing practices of pastoral guidance to help LGBT young adults navigate the relationship between their faith and sexuality. An ordained Episcopal priest, Thomas works in campus ministry for the Diocese of New Hampshire.

Luke Whitmore is a doctoral candidate in the West and South Asian Religions course of study of Emory's Graduate Division of Religion. His dissertation, entitled "In Pursuit of Maheshvara: Understanding Kedarnath as Place and as Tirtha," is a critically and phenomenologically inflected anthropology of place focused on the Hindu pilgrimage site of Kedarnath, located high up in the north Indian Himalayas. Whitmore has studied Hebrew in Jerusalem, Greek in Athens, and Hindi and Sanskrit in India. He is particularly drawn to theorizing the relationships between place, image, narrative, deity, pilgrimage, and tourism. His other academic interests include visual culture and religion in South Asia, Jewish studies, theories of myth, the study of religion in the university, cultural geography, and the anthropologies of religion and experience.

Almeda M. Wright is a doctoral candidate in the Person, Community and Religious Life course of study of the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. Her dissertation, entitled "Integrated-Integrating Pedagogy," offers a practical theological analysis of the spirituality of African American adolescents. Wright addresses a trend among youth to "fragment" or separate their religious convictions from taking action and responding to injustices in "non-religious" contexts. Combining an analysis of educational curricula and sermons in African American churches with interviews of African American youth, she seeks both to analyze the complexity of fragmented spirituality among African American youth and to offer pedagogical strategies that empower youth to "integrate" the various dimensions of their spirituality.

Haemin Lee is a doctoral student in the Person, Community, and Religious Life course of study of the GDR at Emory University. Born in Seoul, Haemin has a longstanding interest in utilizing academic knowledge in the service of humanity, bridging the gap between the academy of religion and religious practices at international and inter-religious levels. As an ordained Presbyterian minister (PC(USA)), Haemin has served as a pastor in Brazilian, African, Korean, and American congregations and as a chaplain at Harvard and Emory hospitals, Saint Francis House in Boston, and UNICEF. Haemin is generally interested in Christian global missions in conjunction with intercultural studies, postcolonialism, postmodernism, developmental psychology, and cultural anthropology. His current ethnographic research focuses on Korean Christian transnational NGO groups. Haemin holds degrees from Emory (Th.M.), Harvard (M.Div.), and Yonsei (B.A.).

An ordained Baptist minister within the historic black church, Jermaine McDonald is a doctoral student in the Ethics and Society course of study in Emory?s Graduate Division of Religion. He is interested in religious rhetoric within progressive/liberal U.S. political discourse and the ways in which black Baptist churches have historically and contemporarily connected church mission and liberationist ideals with public/political goals. McDonald has a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Virginia and an M.Div. from the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University. Prior to doctoral studies, he worked as a web-based systems developer and as a hospital and hospice chaplain.

Jessica M. Smith is a doctoral student in the Theological Studies course of study of the GDR. Her academic interests center around feminist and womanist scholarship in contemporary Christian theology. She utilizes feminist and womanist literature, feminist theory, and post-structuralist thought as sources for her constructive theological work.  Currently, she is interested in re-imagining angelic revelation as a redemptive epistemology for the transformation of self and community.

Don E. Saliers recently retired as William R. Cannon Distinguished Professor of Theology and Worship and director of the master of sacred music program at Emory University. After attending Ohio Wesleyan University, he earned his B.D. degree and a Ph. D. from Yale University. Saliers is currently writing on liturgy and theological aesthetics. Previous publications include: Filled with Light (2008), Music and Theology (2007), A Song to Sing, a Life to Live (2004), coauthored with daughter Emily Saliers; The Conversation Matters (1999), coacuthor; Human Disability and the Service of God (1998), coauthor; Worship Come To Its Senses (1996); Worship As Theology (1994); Christian Spirituality III (1989), coeditor with critical introduction; Handbook For the Christian Year (1986, 1992); K. Barth's Prayer (1985), coeditor with critical introduction; Worship and Spirituality (1984); and Soul in Paraphrase: Prayer and Religious Affections (1980, 1991). Having published over 125 articles and book chapters, he has lectured widely in colleges, universities and churches. Dr. Saliers has been organist and musical director of the Sunday liturgy at Cannon Chapel since 1975, and is an active composer. He is an oblate of Saint John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota.

Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger earned her Ph.D. in South Asian Language and Literature from the University of Wisconsin. She specializes in performance studies and anthropology of religion. She is the author of Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India and In Amma's Healing Room: Gender & Vernacular Islam in South India. She is currently writing a book on a South Indian goddess tradition, titled When the World Becomes Female. She is also the co-editor of Oral Epics in India and Boundaries of the Text: Epic Performances in South and Southeast Asia. Flueckiger's seminars and courses include: Performance and Ethnography in West and South Asia; Life History Narratives and Methods; Women, Religion and Ethnography; Dance and Embodied Knowledge in the Indian Context, Modern Hinduism; and Religion, Health and Healing.

Dianne M. Stewart Diakité. Received her B.A. from Colgate University, her M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School, and her Ph.D. in Theology from Union Theological Seminary. She is the author of Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience (Oxford University Press, 2005). She has taught previously at Macalester College, St. Paul, MN and at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA. Her teaching and research focus upon theologies and religious practices of the African diaspora with special emphases on Black/womanist theologies, and African-derived religions.

Don Seeman is associate professor in the Department of Religion and the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory. He is a social and medical anthropologist who publishes broadly in ritual theory, the phenomenology of lived experience and the anthropology of suffering, as well as Jewish thought. His ethnography One People, One Blood: Ethiopian-Israelis and the Return to Judaism (Rutgers, 2009) was the inaugural volume in a new series on Jewish Cultures of the World. In addition Don currently chairs the interdisciplinary doctoral program in Jewish Religious Cultures at Emory and participates in the Religion and Public Health Collaborative.

Melissa Browning is a doctoral candidate in Christian Ethics at Loyola University Chicago. Her current academic project focuses on the lived experiences of HIV positive women in Mwanza, Tanzania.

Jeanine Viau is a doctoral student in Christian Ethics at Loyola University Chicago. Her dissertation project focuses on sexual justice in US education, and the relationship between cultural narratives and agency in the LGBTQ youth activist movement.

Eunice Karanja Kamaara is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya and Affiliate professor of Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, US. Kamaara has special interests in International research Ethics.

Elisabeth T. Vasko is an Assistant Professor of Theology at Duquesne University. Her current research examines suffering, beauty, and the symbol of the cross in light of feminist hermeneutics.

Damaris S. Parsitau is a Lecturer of African Christianities at Egerton University in Kenya. She is finalizing her doctorate thesis on Neo-Pentecostalism and Civic Engagement in Kenya. Her areas of interests include Global Pentecostalism, Religion and Gender, Transnational Religious Movements, Religion and Civic Engagement, Religion and Popular Culture and Religion and Politics.

Edith Kayeli is a doctoral candidate at the University of Nairobi. Her current academic project is an Investigation of the role and meaning of Birth, naming, marriage and death rituals among the Maragoli of Western Kenya in view of Roman Catholic Inculturation.

Sussy Gumo Kurgat is a senior lecturer in the Department of Religion, Theology and Philosophy- Maaseno University, Kenya. She holds a PhD from Maseno University [2005], MA in Religion and BEd from University of Nairobi-Kenya. Areas of research interest include feminist theology, gender studies, religion and development, research methods, comparative religion, ethics and religion and human rights.

Emily Reimer-Barry is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego. In her research she explores the intersection of Catholic social and sexual teachings. Her current project focuses on HIV-prevention in U.S. prisons from a common good approach.

Todd David Whitmore is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics in the Department of Theology and Faculty Fellow in the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is also co-founder and president of PeaceHarvest (peaceharvest.org), a nongovernmental organization that combines agricultural development and peacebuilding in northern Uganda and South Sudan. He has been doing fieldwork in the region since 2005.

Jennifer M. Beste is an associate professor of theological ethics at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is author of God and the Victim: Traumatic Intrusions on Grace and Freedom (2007). In addition to research interests in trauma and Christian theology, feminist ethics, and medical ethics, she is presently writing a book on Catholic children and Christian ethics.

Annie Hardison-Moody is a doctoral student in the Person, Community, and Religious Life course of study in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. Her work navigates the intersections of religion, health and healing, particularly related to women's reproductive health and gender-based violence. She has experience in public health research and practice, which she brings to her theological scholarship. Hardison-Moody's current work is an ethnographic study of women's practices of resistance, survival and care for those who have experienced gender-based violence.

Tracey E. Hucks is an associate professor of religion at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. Her research interests includes history of religion in America, African American religious history in the U.S., and African religions in the Americas.

Peter Gottschalk is professor of religion and director of the South Asian Studies Certificate at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. He is author of Beyond Hindu and Muslim: Multiple Identity in Narratives from Rural India and co-author of Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy. The two authors have also recently co-edited Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations, and Resistances (forthcoming).

Mathew N. Schmalz is associate professor of religious studies and director of the College Honors Program at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts. His research interests include South Asian religions, global Catholicisms and Modern Religious Movements.The two authors have also recently co-edited Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations, and Resistances (forthcoming).

David M. Mellott is Assistant Professor of Practical Theology and Director of Ministerial Formation at Lancaster Theological Seminary. As a theologian, teacher, and spiritual director, Mellott is committed to supporting and nurturing Christian communities that empower people to live more authentically as they seek to love God, neighbor, and self more deeply. Mellott's doctoral work focused on the religious practices of the Penitentes in northern New Mexico as a way to explore the relationship between the spiritual practices of a community and the theology that emerges from that community.

Jennifer M. McBride received her doctorate in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia in 2008. She was a 2008/2009 Postdoctoral Fellow in Religious Practices and Practical Theology, hosted by Candler School of Theology and the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. At present, she is a Visiting Lecturer at Candler School of Theology where she serves as the Atlanta Theological Association's Director of the Certificate in Theological Studies at Metro State Prison for Women. She is the author of The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness (Oxford UP, forthcoming) and co-editor of Bonhoeffer and King: Their Legacies and Import for Christian Social Thought (Fortress Press, August 2010).

Katie Lassiter is a doctoral candidate in Religion, Psychology, and Culture and a fellow in the Theology and Practice program in the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University. She researches healing and transformation, lived religious experience, and is dogged by questions about wisdom. She is an avid reader of mystery novels and a jazz aficionado.

Ashley Coleman is a third year Ph.D. candidate in Religion at Emory University. Her field of study is Person, Community and Religious Life and she is a concentrator in Religious Practices and Practical Theology. Her project explores religious experience, moral development and black identity development for Afro-Puerto Ricans.

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