Current GDR Students

Courtney Ariel Bowden (she/her) is a songwriter, writer, and storyteller. She graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, and Vanderbilt University with a Master of Divinity and certificates in Religion, Arts & Culture, and the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender & Sexuality. She is currently a doctoral fellow at Emory University in the Graduate Division of Religion, American Religious Cultures. 

She has written articles that appear on Sojo.net, The Tennessean, CNN, and Harper's Bazaar. Her research interests center around Black women’s spiritual and religious lineages. 

She identifies as an artist-scholar who shows up learning & unlearning in community.
Website: www.courtneyariel.com

Alyssa Lynn Elliott is a is a doctoral student in Historical Studies in Theology and Religion. Her general focus is on Christian theology in the 2nd-7th centuries in the Greek, Syriac, and Latin traditions. Elliott’s current work focuses on homiletic and catechetical literature in the 4^th century, particularly in the way they articulate the developing pneumatology of that era.

Her broader research interests include the development of angelology and demonology, the role of exorcisms in Christian initiation, and the use of teaching hymns in the Syriac tradition. Elliott is an ordained minister in the Christian Churches of the Stone-Campbell Movement. She holds a Master of Divinity with a concentration in Historical Theology from Emmanuel Christian Seminary at Milligan University and a B.A. in Biblical and Theological Studies from Manhattan Christian College.

Anya Fredsell is a doctoral student in Asian, African, and Middle Eastern Religions, Her academic interests include South Asian religions, Tamil language and culture, gender and sexuality studies, and ethnography of religion. Her research relies on ethnographic methodologies to examine relationships among families, land, and deities in contemporary Tamil Nadu, India. Anya received her BA in Religious Studies from Elon University and MTS in Global Religions from Emory's Candler School of Theology. Prior to graduate studies she completed a Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Fellowship in Chennai, India.

Jazzy Johnson is a community educator specializing in curating and facilitating transformative liturgical and religious education experiences of learning at the intersections of Christian faith, identity, justice, and repair. Prior to Emory, Jazzy designed and directed immersive learning experiences for college students in Chicago. She graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies and Sociology Minor and Emory University Candler School of Theology with her Master of Divinity degree, certificate in Religious Education and concentration in Justice, Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation. Jazzy is currently a doctoral student at Emory University in the Graduate Division of Religion in the Person, Community and Religious Life course of study.

As a practitioner, Jazzy facilitates and researches B/bibliodrama, a method of embodied collective storytelling and pluralistic, interpretive, play practice . Jazzy’s research interests live within the interconnections between pedagogy, performance, play(ing), and protest in Liturgics and Religious Education, with particular attention to the relationship between Black women’s bodies and the body(ies) of the Earth.

Alapa Odugbo holds a BA and an MA in Religion from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and Georgia State University, USA, respectively. His PhD research interests focus on the diverse ways that metaphysical realities impact moral ethics, provide explanations for health conditions and extraordinary occurrences and function as survival symbols in indigenous African contexts. Alapa is committed to broadening knowledge through critical scholarship and education on diverse indigenous beliefs and how they change, adapt, and interact with modernity and frequently cross paths with public health, commerce, state policies, and other issues that have profound impact on human existence and possibilities.

Mary Ann Robertson is a doctoral candidate in the Ethics and Society course of study. Their dissertation, tentatively titled, “Defiant Memory: Confronting Slavery and Historical Violence at an American University,” explores the relationship between slavery and its afterlives and higher education in the United States. The project engages critical history, political theology, and ethics to unpack various practices of institutional remembrance—truth-telling committees, buildings and memorials, and the designation of burial grounds—and seeks to build upon an ethical framework of “dangerous memory” that centers relationship and radical transformation.

In addition to their dissertation work and teaching, Mary Ann is the assistant managing editor for Southern Spaces, a digital, open-access journal published by the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship. Prior to their doctoral studies, Mary Ann received their BA in Religious Studies and American Politics from the University of Virginia, and their M.Div from Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Taha Firdous Shah is a doctoral student in Asian, African, and Middle Eastern Religions (AAMER). Her work is at the convergence of Islamic studies, anthropology, and peace studies in South Asia. She is interested in examining how Sufism has created an alternate space for fostering faith and peace, especially for women. Her work will explore the shaping of ideas and cultures through the circulation and exchange of information from dargāhs (shrines) and khanqāhs (Sufi lodges) to common households. Taha received her MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge and a BA in English Literature and History from St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi.

Victoria (Yun-Ching) Shen is a doctoral candidate in Historical Studies in Theology and Religion. Shen’s work focuses on East Asian Christian political activism since the 1950s, especially in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Her dissertation, tentatively titled “Transpacific Taiwanese female Christians’ political activism from 1970 to 2000,” analyzes how overseas Taiwanese female Christians and Taiwanese American female Christians participated and contributed to the democratization of Taiwan. Moreover, it also focuses on how transpacific immigration and the experience in the United States influenced the political activism of overseas Taiwanese female Christians and Taiwanese American female Christians. Shen’s writing has appeared in Exchange: Journal of Contemporary Christianities in Context. 

Prior to her doctoral studies, Shen worked as an admission intern and research assistant at the Candler School of Theology and volunteered as the Youth and Worship Coordinator at the Atlanta Taiwanese Presbyterian Church. Shen received a Master of Theological Studies from the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, and a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies & History from the University of South Carolina, Columbia. 

Prathiksha Srinivasa is a doctoral candidate in South Asian religions. She is interested in the category of Indian secularism and is trying to figure out what makes it so distinctively “Indian.” Her research traces a long genealogy of secularist thought in India starting in the 1850s and shows how secularism has been used as an analytic category for engaging questions of religious identity, representation, citizenship, and class well before the establishment of the Indian nation state. In the process, she highlights some fascinating connections between British radicalism, Indian liberalism, and Hindu nationalism. Prathiksha received a BA from Carleton College and an MTS from Harvard Divinity School.  

Mufdil Tuhri is a doctoral student in the field of Asian, African, and Middle Eastern Religions. His academic interests lie at the intersection of religious studies (Islam, Christianity, and indigenous religions), anthropology, and political theology. He aims to study the relationship between religion, state, and society in Indonesia through the lens of "religious moderation." He intends to explore how the Indonesian government strategically utilizes this concept to combat extreme and radical tendencies and how it affects and reshapes people's everyday practices. Mufdil received his Bachelor's degree in Islamic Theology from the Padang State Islamic Institute in Indonesia and a Master's degree in Religious and Cross-cultural Studies from the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS) at Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia.