News of DSR alumni and friends
Gregory Peter Fewster, DSR PhD 2019, is wrapping up a SSHRC postdoc in the Department of Classics/Royal Ontario Museum, and will be starting a 3-year position as a postdoctoral research fellow at the MF vitenskapelig høyskole (MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion, and Society) in Oslo, Norway in September 2022. The fellowship centres on his new project entitled “Beyond the Religion of the Book: Epistolary Forms and New Textual Authorities in Graeco-Roman Intellectual Culture.” Challenging the common view that Christian literate practices were exceptional relative to the broader Graeco-Roman milieu, this project will investigate how books of collected letters associated with religious and philosophical heroes began to be used as textual authorities in the competitive intellectual culture of the second century CE.
Marisa Karyl Franz, DSR PhD 2019, most recently Faculty Fellow in Museum Studies at New York University, has accepted a position as Clinical Assistant Professor in Museum Studies, also at NYU.
Matthew King, DSR PhD 2014, now associate professor at UC Riverside, is a contributor to The Many Faces of King Gesar: Tibetan and Central Asian Studies in Homage to Rolf A. Stein (Brill, 2022). Contributors also include Professor Frances Garrett, who was Matthew's supervisor during his doctoral studies.
DSR graduate faculty member Professor Michael Lambek (Anthropology), retires this summer after a brilliant career as a leader in the field of anthropology of religion at U of T. We thank Michael for his many contributions to the DSR in this time, and wish him many congratulations on his retirement.
Bryan Levman, DSR PhD 2014, is the author of Pāli and Buddhism: Language and Lineage, published November 2021 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. The book examines the influence of multilingualism on the Pāli record of the Buddha’s teaching and other factors of language change in the context of comparative philology. Bryan has had a busy publication year, including two articles in the International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, an article entitled “Sanskritization and Pāli” in the Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, and three more articles on a range of Buddhist studies topics.