2020–2021
SHPRS ANNUAL REPORT 2020–2021
Letter from the Director Notwithstanding the unprecedented challenges of a global pandemic, 2021 was a year of remarkable achievement for the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies. Over the course of the year, SHPRS underwent its Academic Program Review (APR), a rigorous overview of programs undertaken every seven years. The review, which involved a faculty self-study led by Associate Professor of Religious Studies Jason Bruner in the fall and a virtual site visit by a team of faculty from other universities and a SHPRS alum in the spring, confirmed what SHPRS faculty, staff and students knew all along: the School is a vibrant community of inquiry, comprised of dedicated and extraordinarily hardworking people united by a vision of education to which the humanities are critical, a passion for scholarly exploration and discovery and a fierce commitment to the communities and individuals we serve. Noting the School’s contributions to the realization of the ASU Charter, the research productivity and external funding record of our faculty, the quality and scale of our immersion and online programs, our enrollment growth and retention and graduation rates, our curricular innovations, the competence and morale of staff, our budget and resource management, and our public outreach, the site visitors found SHPRS to be “an extraordinary place, worthy of praise and admiration for its many attainments.” Those attainments reached new heights in the past year, with 32,294 student enrollments, 1,613 undergraduate majors and 540 graduate students. Our world-class faculty published numerous books and garnered over $1.6 million in external grants and fellowships. Two of our historians, Associate Professors Anna Holian and Laurie Manchester, were awarded prestigious and highly competitive grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for projects they will be undertaking in the coming year. Dr. Holian’s project is entitled “Setting Up Shop in the House of the Hangman: Jewish Economic Life in Postwar Germany” and Dr. Manchester’s is entitled “From China to the USSR: The Return of the ‘True’ Russians.” Five new tenure-line faculty joined the School: •L eslie Alexander, Associate Professor of History •C urtis Austin, Associate Professor of History •K atherine Bynum, Assistant Professor of History •M arcello Di Bello, Assistant Professor of Philosophy •H an Hsien Liew, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
SHPRS convened a new Anti-Racism Committee in the summer of 2020, led by Associate Professor of History Julian Lim in the fall and Regents Professor of History Donald Fixico in the spring. The committee has worked tirelessly to institutionalize a commitment to racial justice within SHPRS and ASU. “To be anti-racist,” the committee’s mission statement notes, is “to reimagine anti-racist futures based on justice, liberation and freedom – futures that we hope ASU students, staff and faculty and our broader communities, will join us in imagining, creating and enacting.” Responding to the economic turmoil precipitated by the pandemic, SHPRS established a student emergency support fund, which raised and disbursed emergency funding for students impacted by job-loss and other financial hardships. Our students were, as always, remarkable, working with faculty on research projects, including A Journal of the Plague Year, SHPRS’s public history archive of the COVID-19 pandemic, winning awards and launching a new student-led, peer-reviewed SHPRS Digital Humanities Journal. Following on our APR, our focus in the coming year will be on SHPRS’s work in support of the common good. The aim is to reach and serve exponentially broader audiences by multiplying the points of contact at which our educational mission engages various publics in Arizona and beyond. This mission, and the many achievements of faculty, staff and students, are possible only through the support of our donors, and we are enormously grateful for your generosity. Please be in touch and let me know how we can work together to advance our mission of excellence, access and impact.
With gratitude,
Richard Amesbury Director, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies
Mission The School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies produces innovative and distinguished research on subjects such as morality, rationality and ethics; race, citizenship and immigration; and the role of religion in public life. SHPRS faculty educate thousands of students every year and share knowledge with millions of people beyond the university through accessible media. SHPRS enables students and the public to make sense of complex issues that are of critical importance to Arizona, United States and the world.
94
2,153
532
total faculty
total students
total courses
Overall
$1,641,422
1,613 undergraduate students
total grants and fellowship awards
540 graduate students
21 grants awarded totaling $1,539,165 + 7 fellowships awarded totaling $102,257
32,294 total students taught
SHPRS ANNUAL REPORT 2020–2021
2020–2021 SHPRS Leadership
Leadership
Richard Amesbury
Katherine Osburn
Christopher Jones
Director
Associate Director for Undergraduates Studies
Associate Director for Graduate Studies
History
Andrew Barnes Personnel Committee Chair
Peter Van Cleave Director of Online Programs
Matthew CaseyPariseault Associate Director of Online Programs
Philosophy
Catherine O’Donnell
Laurie Manchester
Christopher Jones
Cheshire Calhoun
Faculty Head
Associate Head for Undergraduate Studies
Associate Head for Graduate Studies
Faculty Head
Religious Studies
Leah Sarat
Jason Bruner
Joel Gereboff
Faculty Head
Associate Head for Undergraduate Studies
Associate Head for Graduate Studies
Peter Kung Associate Head for Undergraduate Studies
Douglas Portmore Associate Head for Graduate Studies
SHPRS ANNUAL REPORT 2020–2021
Faculty We say good-bye to faculty who retired:
Susan Gray 30 years
Steven Reynolds 32 years
We welcome two postdoctoral scholars who join us for the upcoming school year:
Michael Kenny Postdoctoral scholar for Political Leadership and History program
Matthijs Tieleman Postdoctoral scholar for Political Leadership and History program
Kenny received his PhD in history from the University of California, San Diego. His research includes political history and the history of political ideologies in modern Central and Eastern Europe.
Tieleman received his PhD in history from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on colonial and early American history.
SHPRS ANNUAL REPORT 2020–2021
SHPRS Shelf Life Beasts, Humans, and Transhumans in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
In Defense of Populism: Protest and American Democracy Donald Critchlow
Eugene Clay
Unsere Väter, unsere Mütter: Deutsche Generationen seit 1945 Volker Benkert
The Currency of Empire: Money and Power in Seventeenth-Century English America Jonathan Barth
The Oxford Handbook of American Political History Edited by Donald Critchlow
Ethics After Wittgenstein: Contemplation and Critique Edited by Richard Amesbury
SHPRS ANNUAL REPORT 2020–2021
Students in the News Creating academic dialogues for female athletics Jake Dean has many interests, the most recent being the way women are represented in sports. Before graduating in spring 2021, he was a student in Barrett, The Honors College with a double major in anthropology and earth and space exploration, with a concentration in astrobiology and biogeosciences as well as a double minor in history and sustainability. Dean’s current project is working to bring research and literature about female athletes to the academic conversation. He presented his research at the ASU Virtual Humanities Symposium in a flash talk in spring 2020 and recently published an opinion piece on his research in El Universal, one of the biggest dailies based in Mexico City. Read more
Religious studies PhD candidate wins Fulbright fellowship Fourth-year religious studies PhD student Blayne Harcey was the recipient of a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship last fall. The fellowship is designed to enhance foreign language and area studies for future educators in the U.S. by supporting their dissertation research abroad. His current research project is titled, “Locating Lumbini: Transnational Buddhism and the Construction of World Heritage in Nepal” and it engages the Buddha’s birthplace at Lumbini as a case study for exploring the complicated material outcomes of Buddhist encounters with modernity. Read more
East Asian studies graduate reflects on time abroad before COVID-19 Going into college, Emily Creasman thought she wanted to major in music because she enjoyed marching band and drumline in high school, but she developed an interest in learning Korean. She enrolled at ASU and declared her major in East Asian studies from SHPRS and added a minor and certificate in Korean studies and received scholarships including the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, John and Sandra Koo Scholarship Award and the ASU Academic Achievement Scholar Award. Read more
Undergraduate double major celebrates his time as a research assistant, legislative intern Dino Hadziahmetovic balanced a lot while pursuing his undergraduate education. He enrolled at ASU with the President’s Award after his acceptance to Barrett, The Honors College and decided to double major in philosophy and political science. He signed up for the Undergraduate Research Experience program in SHPRS where he was a research assistant for assistant professor of philosophy Maura Priest. Read more
Active-duty military student and religious studies grad named a fall 2020 Dean’s Medalist Aaron E. Garcia knew he wanted to obtain a higher education from a young age. After he and his family immigrated to the U.S., his father would take him to work to help install tile. He decided he wanted to work toward becoming a chaplain and researched what he needed to do to make that dream a reality. A master’s degree in divinity is a requirement for the position, so he chose to pursue a degree in religious studies with a concentration in religion, culture and public life and a degree in political science. Garcia was chosen as SHPRS’s Dean’s Medalist last fall. Read more
Barista seizes opportunity to pursue religious studies degree at ASU Adriana Soto joined a community of 3,000-plus Starbucks employees who have earned a bachelor’s degree online from ASU for free. An Arizona native, Soto said she was familiar with ASU’s reputation and had friends who had attended the university, but it wasn’t until she was presented with the opportunity to attend through the Starbucks College Achievement Program (SCAP) that she took the plunge and applied. Soto graduated with her bachelor’s degree in religious studies with a minor in philosophy from SHPRS. She was recognized for her academic achievements with an induction into Theta Alpha Kappa. Read more
History student who researches slavery in the medieval Islamic world earns Dean’s Medal Since enrolling at ASU to obtain his bachelor’s in history, Joshua Robinaugh has been an active member of the community. He was the undergraduate representative for Phi Alpha Theta, an American honor society for undergraduate and graduate students and professors of history, the vice president of Eta Sigma Phi, a collegiate honor society for the study of classics, and he completed an undergraduate research experience during his junior year. Robinaugh received the SHPRS Dean’s Medal this spring. Read more
Humanities undergrad uses research on Armenia to pen article of awareness The news of the reignited war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh region left undergraduate student Jaxon Washburn feeling distraught. After serving a church mission in Armenia and making connections with many people there, Washburn worried about the possibility of a second genocide. He expressed his concerns to his friend and colleague Daniel Gullotta, mentioning his desire to pitch different op-eds to various outlets and newspapers to raise awareness. Gullotta put Washburn in touch with representatives from The Bulwark, a news network launched in 2018 dedicated to providing political analysis and reporting free from the constraints of partisan loyalties or tribal prejudices, according to their website. Read more
Philosophy, political science graduate finds passion in local politics When ASU student Hannah Willes graduated from high school in Colorado 10 years ago, she swore to never go back. She didn’t think she was cut out for school and wanted to dive into a career instead. She started working in the medical administration field and was able to run a local practice within a year of graduating high school. After four years of working at the practice, she realized balancing a full-time school and work schedule wouldn’t fit for her. She began working as a server to free up time to go back to school and after a year of doing that, she enrolled full-time at Paradise Valley Community College. She enrolled at ASU and also joined Barrett, The Honors College to pursue a double major in philosophy with a concentration in morality, politics and law and political science. During her final semester, she interned full time for the Arizona State Legislature and says it is one of the best experiences of her academic career. Read more
SHPRS ANNUAL REPORT 2020–2021
SHPRS in the News: The Year’s Top Stories
Vote early at ASU As the ASU campuses got ready to cast their votes for the 2020 general election, history lecturer James Hrdlicka spoke with ASU News about the history of the voting age in the U.S. Read more
What 2020 taught us about the importance of the humanities In a feature on what the humanities have taught us during 2020, A Journal of a Plague Year: A COVID-19 Archive, an active archive started by SHPRS faculty, is highlighted. The archive is designed to capture the magnitude of the pandemic in real time for future historians to refer back to. Read more
Native Narratives program embraces storytelling, supports future leaders In a feature about a new two-year program where Native students complete specialized courses designed to help them gain tools to effectively share their stories, connect with university mentors and receive ongoing support; a student mentions having clinical assistant professor of history Victoria Jackson as a mentor. Read more
A people’s man, a man’s legacy SHPRS helped facilitate a donation to the ASU Library archives of documents following the life and legacy of Emmett McLoughlin, the founder of Saint Monica’s Hospital in Phoenix, which later became the Phoenix Memorial Hospital. The hospital housed the first racially integrated nursing school west of the Mississippi River in the U.S. and ultimately became the first medical care facility for poor communities in Arizona. Read more
Is America losing its civil religion? Religious studies faculty members Tracy Fessenden and John Carlson spoke with ASU News about the January 6 insurrection of the U.S. Capital and what it means about the state of civil religion in the country. Read more
Books by ASU authors that illuminate the African American experience In honor of Juneteenth, ASU News highlighted books by ASU faculty that illuminate the African American experience, which included quite a few books by SHPRS faculty members. Read more
The humanities made possible by you “Gifts improve the student community in a number of ways, but they affect each person differently depending on that person’s specific circumstances and goals. In my case, I view the Friends of Philosophy Scholarship as enhancing both my education and my credentials.” Chad Brack Philosophy and Religious Studies Alumnus Winner of the Friends of Philosophy Scholarship
SHPRS ANNUAL REPORT 2020–2021
Thank you to donors who supported SHPRS during the 2020–2021 academic year. $223,392
Together, we were able to raise more to fund student scholarships, research and academic programming. We appreciate the support of:
Elizabeth Adams Karen Adams Sara Adar Jacob Affolter Jay Alabaster Diane Alters Richard Amesbury John and Patricia Ammon Emily Anderson Mary Anderson Gwen Arner John and Cheryl Arner Steve and Jessica Austin Andrew Barnes Mark Barrios Asuncion Benitez-Rush and James Rush Volker Benkert and Anne Jones Bob Bercaw and Jerry Hodge Evan Berry Monica Bhide Jennifer Bickford Katherine Brewer and Christopher West Carleen and Daniel Brophy Claudia Brown and Richard Stevenson Philip Brown Rachel Bunning Diana and Kevin Burns Katherine Bynum Cheshire Calhoun Matthew Casey-Pariseault Jim Chamberlain 2007 Trust Wah-Ming Chang Huaiyu Chen Hyungsub Choi John Clay and Agnes Kefeli Clay John and Anne Cook Emalee Craft and Joseph Foy Michael Currey Shelby Curtis Muhammad Iftikhar Dadi Saheli Datta Doe Daughtrey Ellen Davis Jigna Desai John P. Dimoia Alvin Donato Lei Duan James and Florenia Eder Kjell David Ericson Rachel Fedock Anne Feldhaus and Stephen MacKinnon Charles Fisk Jeffrey Fleetham Fountain Hills Republican Club Thomas and Betty Fournier
Elizabeth Foster Gerald Rosenbluth Family Fund John Gilkeson and Susan Gray Tula Goenka Yoshie and Andrew Gordon Brian Gratton and Catherine O’Donnell Mridula Grover Susan and Charles Harris Mary Harrison Alexander and Gabriele Henn Amalia Herrmann and John Kim David and Kathryn Hewitt Alex Hinely John and Tamara Hoehn Barbara and William Horrigan James Hrdlicka Ted Humphrey Amanda Hutchison and Logan Rhind Christopher Jones David and Eliza Katzin William Kavan Sayuko and Bernard Kobes Richard and Felicia Kurz Kenjiro Iwamura Lou and Kathy Jaffe Tsitsi Jaji Kristen and Jeffrey Johnson Robert Kantin Yoshiyuki Kikuchi Yong Kim and Steve Moore Chatham and Jennie Kitz Darren and Debra Kleinberg Timothy Langille James Lawson Grace Lee Theodore and Carolyn Lesnett Makenna Lewis Jongtae Lim Julian Lim and Peter Schmelz Katherine LO Zona and Thomas Lorig Laurie Manchester Tsimchi Manoach and Hava Samuelson William Marotti Andres Martinez Manisha Master George Mathew Erica and Garrett May Archie and Jeanne McGill Joan McGregor Kelly Mcintyre Sarah McKibben Eric McLeod and Stephanie Mabee Ian Miller Roy and Mary Miller
Hiromi Mizuno Lisa Chung Ja Park Moore Angela Naimou Takashi Nishiyama Sharman Ober-Reynolds and Steven Reynolds Katherine and Michael O’Malley Katherine and Charles Osburn Eligio and Kathleen Padilla Eunju Park Pup-Shin and Ae-Kyung Park Karen Pekowitz Cristal Pena Zachary Pirtle Kristen Ray Ron and Patty Rezac RMS Family, LLC Kimberly Roche Robert and Sheila Roe David Rosen Jason Ross Kristen Rudisill Vela William Sage Alan and Jill Sandler Daniel and Cathy Sarver Derek Schaible Juliane Schober Susan Kay Schultz Mimosa Shah Purvi Shah Isaiah Shaird Warren Shaw David and Amy Shepard Terry Shoemaker Tiffany Shotwell Jeffrey and Margaret Singer Aaron Skabelund Abigail Smith Emma Sonderman Joy and Gaylord Staveley Celina Su Ying Jia Tan Thomas and Vicki Taradash Mark Tebeau Mary Trengove Becky Tsang Togo Tsukahara Peter and Kacie Van Cleave Adelheid Voskuhl Liane Voss Linh Vu Kim and Chuck Warren Jeffrey and Johanna Watson Andrew Wenker Nobuko Yamasaki Daqing Yang
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Stay in touch! School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies 975 S. Myrtle Ave P.O. Box 874302 Tempe, AZ 85287-4302 Phone: 480-965-5778 Email: shprs@asu.edu Website: shprs.asu.edu