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Alumni Information

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Graduate Name:  Sarah Neace

Alumni Placement: 

Dissertation Title: Brazil’s Cosmic War: Apocalypticism, Cosmology, and Exorcism in the Pentecostal Holy War on Candomblé and Umbanda

Chair of Dissertation Committee: Allison Coudert

Year of Graduation: 2024


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Graduate Name:  Benjamin Steele-Fisher

Alumni Placement: Lecturer in Jewish Studies, San Francisco State University

Dissertation Title: The Critique of Myth in German-Jewish Thought

Chair of Dissertation Committee: David Biale

Year of Graduation: 2024


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Graduate Name:  Walker Rhea (MA)

Alumni Placement: University of Chicago Divinity School in the History of Religions

Year of Graduation: 2024

 


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Graduate Name:  Aron Tillema

Alumni Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor, Santa Clara University

Dissertation Title: Upside-Down Prophecy: Reflexivity and the Book of Jonah

Chair of Dissertation Committee: Seth Sanders

Year of Graduation: 2023


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Graduate Name:  Aaron French

Alumni Placement: Religious Studies Department at the University of Erfurt, Germany.

Dissertation Title: Disenchanting and Re-Enchanting German Modernity with Max Weber and Rudolf Steiner

Chair of Dissertation Committee: Allison Coudert

Year of Graduation: 2021

Aaron French is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Erfurt and teaching in the religious studies Masters program there. His present position is part of a research project about designing and thematizing still or silent spaces in an urbanized environment: https://holyspace.hypotheses.org/

Prior to this, he was working as a postdoctoral researcher for the DFG-funded Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies 'Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations' research group based at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at Erfurt University, where his main task was to help organize a conference on the theme of co-temporalities. He is in the process of editing a book related to spatiality and modernity, to be published by De Gruyter later this year: https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783111061382/html?lang=de. His first monograph, Max Weber, Rudolf Steiner, and Modern Western Esotericism, will also be published by Routledge in 2024


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Graduate Name: D. Joey Torres

Alumni Placement: Vice President, Strategic Programs and Delivery for Sandy Hook Promise. 
Deputy Director of Social Equity and Innovation for the City of Denver, Colorado. [Prior Position]

Dissertation Title: Seated on the Great White Throne: Examining the Legacies of Whiteness in Progressive Evangelical Christian Perspectives

Chair of Dissertation Committee: Flagg Miller

Year of Graduation: 2021

D.J. Torres is Vice President, Strategic Programs and Delivery for Sandy Hook Promise. Prior to this position, he worked as the Deputy Director of Social Equity and Innovation for the City of Denver.


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Graduate Name: Caillouet Thorman

Alumni Placement: Research Development Specialist (Writer/Editor III), Interdisciplinary Research Support, Office of Research, University of California, Davis

Dissertation Title: Divine Women: Worship of Female Rulers and the Survival of Indigenous Tradition in Hellenistic Ruler Cult

Chair of Dissertation Committee: Lynn Roller

Year of Graduation: 2021

As Research Development Specialist, Cai provides proposal review services for individual investigator grants, especially in the humanities and social sciences, and for early career faculty in the sciences. She also supports seasoned investigators who are preparing grants to agencies new to them or who are writing strategically important or complex proposals.


 

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Graduate Name;  Christopher Miller

Alumni Placement: 
Vice President of Academic Affairs at Arihanta Institute

Dissertation Title: Embodying Transnational Yoga

Chair of Dissertation Committee: Smiriti Srinivas

Year of Graduation: 2018

Chris Miller is currently Vice President of Academic Affairs at Arihanta Institute, which he also co-founded. He also holds a Visiting Professor appointment at Claremont College of Theology and Visiting Researcher at University of Zürich’s Asien-Orient-Institut. Prior to this, he held the Bhagwan Mallinath Chair in Jain Studies at Loyola Marymount University. He is the author of Embodying Transnational YogaEating, Singing, and Breathing in Transformation  (Routledge, Oct 2023).