WELCOME TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF RELIGION

From its beginning, the GDR has pursued its vision of collaboration, interdisciplinarity, connection to a wider conversation in the humanities, diversity, and now an emphasis on religious practices.  At present, the GDR is the home of some 65 faculty teaching across 10 courses of study; more than 100 students on campus pursuing the doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) degree; an innovative multimedia journal, Practical Matters; and the Initiative in Religious Practices and Practical Theology, which promotes research projects, consultations, and interdisciplinary work on religious practices that engages the wider public and promotes the teaching of the practical theological disciplines for future generations of scholars.

The GDR enjoys a rich relationship with the wider Emory University community.  Interdisciplinary work has always been and continues to be at the center of our common life.  All faculty hold primary appointments in other schools, departments, or units of the university.  The GDR interpenetrates all of the signature institutions of Emory University.

• The collections of the Michael C. Carlos Museum span the globe and the centuries.  It holds the largest collection of ancient art in the Southeast.  GDR scholars like Joel LeMon, Carol Newsom, and Carl Holladay work closely with the Museum.
• The Center for the Study of Law and Religion is designed to explore the religious dimensions of law, the legal dimensions of religion, and the interaction of legal and religious ideas, institutions, and methods.  It is international in orientation, seeking to situate American debates over interdisciplinary religious issues within an emerging global conversation.  GDR scholars like Timothy P. Jackson, L. Phillip Reynolds, Luke Timothy Johnson, and Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im work closely with the Center.
• The Center on Myth and Ritual in American Life is one of the five Sloan Centers on Working Families, and focuses its research on the functions and significance of ritual and myth in dual wage-earner middle-class families in the American South.  GDR scholars like Nancy Eiesland work closely with the Center.

Other key institutions involving GDR members are the Emory-Tibet Partnership, the Religions and the Human Spirit Strategic Initiative, and the Youth Theological Initiative.  No less important, the study of religion lies at the heart of Emory's signature commitment to ethical concern and social engagement as an exemplary community of moral inquiry and social responsibility.  GDR students and faculty have been participants in projects partnering academics and community leaders through the Office of University-Community Partnerships and in the research, educational and leadership activities of the Center for Ethics.  No student in the GDR graduates without substantial work completed outside his or her course of study, and the rare GDR student graduates without substantive work from elsewhere in Emory University.  Dissertation committees regularly include faculty from outside the GDR.  Students also have the option of pursuing the dual degree program in with the Law School (JD/PhD).  In short, to enroll in the GDR is to gain access to the entirety of Emory Univers ity.

Emory's Graduate Division of Religion embraces its diversity of persons and intellectual perspectives.  Our faculty and students represent a remarkable range of attitudes about religion.  Located in the vibrant context of Atlanta, the GDR offers a variety of research and learning possibilities.  Faculty and students have gone out into the city to study Hindu temples, Islamic mosques, African American mega-churches, Buddhist sanghas, and multi-racial and multi-ethnic Christian congregations.  Our research and attitudes bespeak the shared view that religion is one of our most intriguing and enduring prisms into central truths about human life and being.

Without hesitation, I can say that there are five signatures of Emory's Graduate Division of Religion.  They are:

• collaboration
  
• interdisciplinarity
  
• connectedness
  
• diversity
  
• an emphasis on religious practices

Thank you for your interest in the GDR.

Cordially,

Michael Joseph Brown, Ph.D.

Director of the Graduate Division of Religion