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Home > Annual Newsletter 2000-01
Alumni & Current Student News
George Charles (M.A. 1997, Ph.D. 2000) has just completed his first year as a tenure-track assistant professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, one of three professors in the Alaska Native Studies Department. He taught Alaska Native Education in the fall semester, a 400-level course which is a study of the school systems historically serving Native people, current efforts toward local control, and the cross cultural nature of this education. In the spring semester he taught a course entitled Cultural Knowledge of the Elders which is a study with prominent Native tradition-bearers in Native philosophies, spirituality, values, and oral traditions. He also assisted one of his co-chairs in supervising students in a practicum in Native cultural expression. This is a three-night dance event where all of Alaska Native cultures are represented and an international dance group is invited to participate; this year it was an Ainu dance group from Japan. He was appointed to the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Alaska Native Education, a committee which meets monthly to discuss issues related to the education of Alaska Native students on the UAF campus; and to the Strategic Plan 2000 committee that developed plans for a First Nations building on the UAF campus which will house all programs and departments related to the First Nations in Alaska. He will be teaching a full load of 5 courses a year, including Alaska Native Education, Cultural Knowledge of the Elders, Native American Religion and Philosophy, the Cultural Knowledge of the Elders, and supervising the Practicum cultural expression course. He is developing a course entitled Alaska Natives in War and is in the planning stages of organizing an international conference on the Cultural Worldviews of Circumpolar Peoples with presenters from Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Russian Federation, Canada, Denmark, Greenland, and Alaska. He will also begin faculty training in academic counseling in the fall semester. Off campus he is involved with the Fairbanks Native Association’s Alaska Native Veterans group, who maintain a presence in most of the public gatherings and functions of Alaska Native Events. It has been an enlightening and fulfilling first year as new faculty on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. (He received an AA degree in electronics from this university in 1971.)
Suzanne Crawford (C.Phil. 2000) reports that her article, “(Re)Constructing Bodies: Semiotic Sovereignty and the Debate Over Kennewick Man,” is being included as a chapter in The Repatriation Reader: Who Owns Native American Remains? edited by Devon Mihesuah, and due out in October, 2000 from University of Nebraska Press.
Ron Grove (M.A. 1979, Ph.D. 1983) left Japan in August for browner pastures in Arabia at the Sharjah Men’s College in the UAE. His new e-mail address is ron.grove@hct.ac.ae. The snail-mail address is: Sharjah Men’s College, P.O. Box 7946, Sharjah, UAE. He’ll be teaching English at a technical college. Last year he and Mary went to India for the first time. Between the Societas Liturgica congress in Kottayam (Kerala) and a presentation to the Syro-Malabar seminary in Satna (MP), they spent a week in Khajuraho and managed to see the Taj Mahal (alone worth the trip!). Relocating will occupy their full attention for the foreseeable future. Greetings to everyone in Santa Barbara.
Julie Ingersoll (Ph.D. 1997) just completed her first year teaching in a tenure-track position (Religion in America, the graduate seminar in Religion, Self, and Society, and African American Religion). She is settling in there in Springfield but misses the ocean and Trader Joe’s. Her summer was packed full with full time writing (she received a grant from the University). The yet-to-be-completed revision of her dissertation is under contract with New York University Press. Her address is Julie Ingersoll, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Southwest Missouri State University, 901 S. National Avenue, Springfield, MO 65802; (417) 836-5893 (office).
Knut A. Jacobsen (M.A. 1988, Ph.D. 1994) was promoted to full professor of the history of religions at the University of Bergen, Norway. Last year he published two books, Prakrti in Samkhya-Yoga: Material Principle, Religious Experience, Ethical Implications (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), and (in Norwegian, with Notto R. Thelle) Hinduism and Buddhism (Kristiansand: Nordic Academic Press, 1999). He published several articles and book reviews in English and Norwegian in different Nordic and international journals of religious studies and of Oriental studies. An article in English, “Kapila: Founder of Samkhya and Avatara of Vishnu,” was published in Orientalia Suecana. He is the Norwegian editor of Chaos, The Danish-Norwegian Journal of the History of Religions. Last year he participated at the conference on South Asian Popular Culture at the University of Victoria, Canada, with the paper “Child Images of the Gods and Goddesses in Contemporary Hindu God Posters: The Childhood of Shiva,” and at the AAR meeting in Boston with the paper “Competing Interpretations of Kapila, the Mythical Founder of the Samkhya Darshana,” and presented papers at several conferences in the Nordic countries. For 2000 he received research grants from the Faculty of Arts to complete a book on Kapila in Hinduism, and from The Research Council of Norway for a study of Hinduism in Diaspora in Norway. Write to him at Knut.Jacobsen@krr.uib.no.
Kathleen Jenks (Ph.D. 1992) sends word that she continues to enjoy teaching as a core faculty member in the Mythological Studies Department at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria; she has been there since mid-1994. Her courses include European Sacred Traditions, Ritual and Ceremony, Folklore and Fairy Tales, and Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Traditions. In connection with her courses, she started a large and growing website in late 1998, Mything Links. The web address is http://www.mythinglinks.org. A Canadian film producer who recently visited her website was impressed enough to have hired her as a part-time mythology consultant, an opportunity she relishes. She is still living in Oxnard Shores with her two Himalayan cats, Shanti and Kavi Chandra. She can be reached via an e-mail address on her website or, directly, at: jenks7@earthlink.net.
Gayle Kimball (M.A. 1971, Ph.D. 1976) can be reached at gkimball@csuchico.edu or the Sociology Department, CSUC. Her latest book is How to Create Your Ideal Workplace, Equality Press. She continues as director of Earth Haven: Center for Spiritual Enrichment, where she teaches workshops in meditation, clairvoyance, and healing. She does clairvoyant readings on the phone and works with energy therapy including acupressure points. Her son is at CSUH (Humboldt State).
Gary Kraftsow (M.A. 1983) lives on Maui with his wife Mirka and his son Matteo. He is currently Director of the American Viniyoga Institute and teaches and conducts trainings, workshops, and retreats on the U.S. mainland and in Europe. His first book, Yoga for Wellness: Healing with the Timeless Tradition of Viniyoga, was published October 1999 by Penguin/Arkana. Contact him through the American Viniyoga Institute, P.O. Box 88, Makawao, HI 96768 or by e-mail at gary@viniyoga.com.
Gary Laderman (M.A. 1988, Ph.D. 1994) is now tenured. Much to everyone’s chagrin, however, he continues to be as neurotic as ever. His boys, Miles and Graham, keep him exhausted, but thoroughly fulfilled; his wife, Liz, remains a pillar of support and love. The next book, Death in Modern America (Oxford UP), is nearing completion. By the end of his post-tenure sabbatical in the fall he hopes to be even closer to completion. Two presentations in the fall (American Studies Association meeting: “The Embalming Century” and Emory History of Medicine Group: “Doctoring Death: Mortuary Science in the Shadow of Medical Science”) should help him to achieve this goal. The other major project he is currently working on, with UCSB alum Luis Leon, is The Encyclopedia of Religion and American Cultures. Additionally, Laderman has been intimately involved with various science and religion initiatives at Emory, including starting up a faculty lunch seminar, organizing a day-long symposium on suffering and healing, and working with physicist P.V. Rao on an upcoming undergraduate seminar (thanks in part to a grant from the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences). Other professional duties recently assumed by Laderman include Associate Director of the Graduate Division of Religion and editorial board member for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion.
Shawn Landres (M.A. 1995, C.Phil. 1996) returned to UCSB in November 1999, having been away in Britain and Slovakia for over three years. Most recently, he completed nearly fourteen months’ fieldwork in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia. He has remained active in conference-going and publishing. This July he presented two papers to the biennial meeting of the European Association of Social Anthropologists; one of these papers is a major plenary address to the conference as part of a “Younger Scholars” panel. Shawn continues to co-chair the AAR’s Religion in Eastern Europe and Former USSR Group, as well as the New Scholars’ Forum of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR). Back at UCSB, Shawn has been elected to serve as Vice President for Academic Affairs of the Graduate Students’ Association. The final issue of the Scottish Journal of Religious studies includes Shawn’s article, “Something Else and Maybe Something More,” on Jewish identity in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia. His essay, “Survival and the Other: A Bakhtinian Reading of Night,” was translated into Slovak and published in the annual proceedings of Matej Bel University Banska Bystrica, where Shawn was a faculty member from 1998 to 1999. Pursuing one of the methodological links between his dual academic citizenship in the disciplines of Social Anthropology and Religious Studies, Shawn (with Jim Spickard and Meredith McGuire) has secured a book contract from New York University Press to produce an edited volume tentatively entitled Reshaping the Ethnography of Religion: Knowledge, Power, and the Interpreter’s Position. Contributors to the book include Richard Hecht, Julie Ingersoll, Christel Manning, and Clark Roof.
Kjell O. Lejon (M.A. 1986, Ph.D. 1987) continues working as an Assistant Professor of Church History at Linköping University. He gave guest-lectures at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick University, Ireland, last fall. He has received two major scholarships: one for leading a project on the history and contemporary situation of the diocese of Linköping, and one for travelling to the U.S. in order to prepare a book on liberalism versus fundamentalism (he will bring his family for a three-months’ stay). Finally, after several delays, the book on Anders Nygren’s Religious Apriori, a co-work together with Walter H. Capps, was published in February. Several articles in a variety of subjects have been published during the last academic year. The family is growing: Jacob is 4, Gabriel is 1, and another member will arrive for Christmas!
Jeffrey Lidke (M.A. 1996, C.Phil. 1996) is a lecturer in South Asian traditions in the Department of Religious Studies, Grinnell College, Iowa. Jeffrey’s wife, Megan, teaches Indian music and dance, and their daughter Sarita is enjoying life in Montessori school.
Edward Linenthal (Ph.D. 1979) continues as Edward M. Penson Professor of Religion and American Culture at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. His book, The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory, will be published by Oxford University Press in the fall of 2001. Son Aaron Linenthal graduated from high school in June 2000, and son Jacob will begin high school next year. Due to the opening of the memorial center museum in Oklahoma City in mid-November of this year, Ed missed his first AAR meeting since 1978. Greetings to all UCSB friends.
Phillip C. Lucas (M.A. 1990, Ph.D. 1992) is entering his 8th year as Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Stetson University. Last spring his co-edited book, Cassadaga: The South’s Oldest Spiritualist Community, was published by University Press of Florida and has already sold two-thirds of the first printing. The book examines the 107-year-old Spiritualist camp at Cassadaga, Florida, through the lens of history, biography, sociology, architecture, and personal experience. Lucas is currently working on an article that examines how pagans in Western Europe are using neolithic sites for various contemporary ritual and energetic purposes. During May and June he conducted field research in Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, and Cumbria. The summer solstice celebration at Castlerigg stone circle near Keswick, England, was most memorable. Lucas continues to edit Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, with his new co-editor Catherine Wessinger. The journal is entering its fourth year of publication. He is excited that John Burris will be a colleague over the next year at Stetson.
Christel Manning (M.A. 1991, Ph.D. 1995) got married on July 31, 1999 to Stewart Hutchings. A week later she bought a house, and is now the proud owner of a decrepit 100-year-old building with a cracked foundation and rotten beams, fighting the state historical commission to let her tear it down. Things look a bit better in her professional life: last winter she was elected to the governing council of SSSR. In spring she won the SHU Faculty Achievement Award in recognition of the publication and positive reviews of her recent book, God Gave Us the Right. It’s good timing, as she’s coming up for tenure in fall 2000 (she can’t believe she’s been there this long). Contact her at Sacred Heart University, 5151 Park Avenue, Fairfield, CT 06511, e-mail: manningc@sacredheart.edu.
Eric Mazur (Ph.D. 1997) got married! On June 11, 2000, Eric married Claudia Isler in a family ceremony in their own back yard in Mifflinburg, PA (population: 3500?). Eric has spent the past year on untenured leave and, in addition to doing a lot of yard work, has finally put the religion and pop culture book to bed; God in the Details (co-edited with Kate McCarthy, published by Routledge, and including UCSB-ers Lisle Dalton, Julie Ingersoll, Tara Koda, Clark Roof, Monica Siems, Elijah Siegler, Jon Stone, and Robin Sylvan) should be on the shelves by November 2000. His first manuscript (The Americanization of Religious Minorities, Johns Hopkins University Press) came out in November 1999. He is currently at work on a project investigating the construction and maintenance of Jewish identity in southeastern Virginia. Anyone who finds him/herself in central PA is welcome to come by!
Nancy McCagney (Ph.D. 1991) retired early from the University of Delaware due to health concerns and has been in Santa Barbara this past year where she hopes to settle for good. The Department has granted her status as a Visiting Scholar so she has library privileges, an e-mail address, and the wonderful collegiality of the department, for which she is most grateful. She’s given two lectures this past year, both for the UCSB Environmental Studies Program. She completed her book Religion and Ecology for Blackwell Press in Oxford and they are now editing it for release in early 2001. She plans on attending the AAR for Ninian’s presidential year and looks forward to seeing you in Nashville.
David McMahan (Ph.D. 1998) is Assistant Professor in the department of religious studies at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. He and Karen Sattler had a baby boy, Caden Allen McMahan, in May and are enjoying the wonders of parenthood. They also bought a house and enjoy sitting in their back yard amidst the trees and shrubs. David is doing some final revisions on his book manuscript, Empty Vision: Ocular Metaphor and Visionary Imagery in Mahayana Buddhism, which will be published by Curzon Press. His e-mail address is d_mcmahan@acad.fandm.edu.
Jim McNamara (M.A. 1976, Ph.D. 1985) continues his work at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, as the Deputy Registrar (responsible for the academic administration of the University), and as Project Manager for an information systems project to build or adopt a new student system for UCT. The highlight of this past year was the opportunity for him, as UCT’s representative, to greet and chat with Nelson Mandela , who came to the campus for a ceremony. Jim reports that Mandela was as warm and gracious as the newspapers portray him to be, and the twenty minutes spent together was quite a thrill (for Jim, that is! He is selling photos - cheap). South Africa continues to be a vibrant and fascinating society in which to live and work, with no shortage of challenges for anyone in the field of education. Having now been ten years in Cape Town, Jim and his wife Marilynn further planted their roots there by recently buying a house. They last visited Santa Barbara in January 2000, when Jim performed the wedding ceremony of Marilynn’s 80-year-old widowed father.
Marcella (Edwards) Norling (B.A. 1982) was at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville for five weeks last summer, participating in a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar. She was fortunate enough to be one of fifteen people selected to ponder “Bioethics in Particular” with James and Hilde Nelson (both in Philosophy at UT, though both are moving to Michigan’s Philosophy department in the fall). The discussions were quite stimulating and rewarding; they contemplated the universal and the particular, identity and personhood, in relation to medical decision-making, newer medical interventions, reproductive technologies (including cloning), and so on. They will each produce papers that may eventually be publishable (they hope!). During the year she teaches Ethics at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, CA, where she is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies. She is developing a Biomedical Ethics course to be offered (hopefully) next year; hence, her interest in the summer seminar. She enjoyed her stay in Tennessee; it was quite a change from California. She can be reached at the Department of Religious Studies, Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, e-mail mnorling@cccd.edu.
Tracy Pintchman (Ph.D. 1992) continues to teach at Loyola University Chicago and direct the interdisciplinary program in Religion, Culture, and Society. She gave birth to her first child, a beautiful girl named Molly Alice French, on April 14th, 2000. Everyone agrees that Molly is far and away the best thing that Tracy has ever produced. Other productions include an edited book, Seeking Mahadevi: Constructing the Identities of the Hindu Great Goddess, forthcoming with SUNY Press, and several articles and book chapters. Tracy will be a research associate and visiting lecturer in the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard University for the 2000-2001 academic year, so she, Molly, and her husband, William French, will be spending the year in Cambridge, Massachussetts. Contaact her at tpintch@luc.edu.
Samuel C. Porter (M.A. 1985) had his article “The Pacific Northwest Forest Debate: Bringing Religion Back In?” published as the lead article in the April 1999 issue of a new British journal, Worldviews: Environment, Culture and Religion. The article is drawn from “‘The Wisdom of the Owl at Dusk’: Cultural Conflict and Moral Disagreement Over the Oregon Forests” (Ph.D. dissertation, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, 1996), which Oregon State University Press is interested in publishing in revised form. So, as he pursues a tenure-track position, he is also transforming his dissertation into a book and teaching part-time as an instructor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oregon. There, he’s been teaching three different courses: Sociology of Religion, New Religious Movements and Environment, and Ethics and Society in the Pacific Northwest. His son, Phineas, will graduate from the John Woolman School in Grass Valley, California next spring and one of his nieces, Abby, will enter Brandeis University this fall. He continues to carry, and has deep gratitude for, the critical yet liberal (in the best sense of the “L” word) sensibility toward the study of religion he learned in UCSB’s Department of Religious Studies all those years ago. He very much misses his teachers, especially Walter Capps, and his fellow students who embody that distinctive sensibility in their work, everyday lives and face-to-face interactions.
Stephen J. Reno (M.A. 1969, Ph.D. 1975 – the first M.A. and Ph.D. degrees granted by the Department) took up a new appointment as Chancellor of the University System of New Hampshire on August 1st, 2000. He left his position as President of Southern Oregon University, where he had served since 1989. While at Southern, Steve developed and taught religious studies courses on pilgrimage, initiation, introduction to comparative religion, and a team-taught course titled “Religion and the Human Experience.” He is presently working with a Korean author to prepare an English version of “The Myths of Korea.”
Claudia Schmidt (M.A. 1985) has been appointed to the faculty of the philosophy department at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
John Simmons (M.A. 1984, Ph.D. 1987) continues as Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Western Illinois University. Over the past year, he converted his PBS-distributed teleclass, Beliefs and Believers, into a CD-ROM, interactive feedback, self-paced format. Initially, the course will be offered through the Navy College Program for Afloat College Education (NCPACE). The program affords Navy sailors on nuclear submarines the opportunity to continue their college education and is administered by Middlesex Research Center located near Washinton, D.C. John adds, “It’s kind of neat to think about a sailor taking an introductory course in religious studies while cruising silently beneath the polar ice cap! Let’s hope they don’t accidently hit the missile launch button instead of fast forward!” The course was offered for the first time this fall, and John is instructor of record through an adjunct position created for him at Governors State University. Usage of the second edition of the Beliefs and Believers teleclass continues to expand at colleges and universities around the country, and he is under contract with Prentice Hall to write an introductory religious studies textbook based on the teleclass, due out, hopefully, in Spring 2002. Aliza (ageless), Lily (age 14), and Sophie (age 11) are all doing fine. He looks forward to seeing everyone at the AAR meetings in Nashville.
Oren Baruch Stier (M.A. 1990, Ph.D. 1996) left his job as Joint Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies and Hebrew & Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town in 1999 to take up a position as Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Florida International University in Miami, a large public institution that at times reminds him of UCSB. The South African experience continues to have an impact on Stier’s work, though, as in a recent co-authored article (“The Question (of) Remains: Remembering Shoah, Forgetting Reconciliation”) discussing the associations made between the Holocaust and apartheid, published in Facing the Truth, a collection of essays on religious institutions’ responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process in South Africa. Stier’s major current research project is his book, under advance contract with Princeton University Press, entitled Memory Matters: Contemporary Holocaust Memorial Culture. This study focuses on the roles the contemporary media and various modes of cultural mediation play in shaping consciousness of the legacy of the Holocaust. Attention is given to topics such as Holocaust icons, museums, video-archiving projects, and commemoration activities. He plans to finish the manuscript, which is a heavy reworking of his doctoral dissertation, this summer. Stier recently participated in a major international conference at Lehigh University, “Representing the Holocaust: Practices, Products, Projections,” which he helped plan and design, bringing together academicians, critics, and artistic practitioners to discuss developments in various artistic responses to the Holocaust. In July, Stier presented a paper at the Remembering for the Future 2000 conference in Oxford, the major gathering of Holocaust scholars of the past few years. At FIU, Stier teaches a wide range of courses in Judaic Studies and more generally in religion and culture, such as Religion and the Holocaust, Jewish Mysticism, and Religion and Literature. He lectures publicly and teaches adult education classes on a variety of topics, ranging from Holocaust representation and theology to Jewish mysticism and spirituality. Stier writes that his apartment is only a few blocks from world-renowned South Beach: visitors are welcome to come by and watch the thunderstorms (or worse!) move in over downtown Miami as they enter the thick of the south Florida hurricane season. Contact him at the Department of Religious Studies, DM301-C, Florida International University, University Park, Miami, FL 33199; phone: (305) 348-6729; fax: (305) 348-1879; e-mail: stiero@fiu.edu.
Tim Vivian (Ph.D. 1985) continues his work as an independent scholar in early Christian monasticism and has joined the staff of Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Bakersfield as an assisting priest. This past year Tim published articles in American Benedictine Review, Coptic Church Review, Hallel, and Journal of Early Christian Studies (fellow alum Gregory Shaw had an article in the same issue) and book reviews in Anglican Theological Review, Journal of Theological Studies, and Religious Studies Review. He also has a new book (co-authored with his brother, Kim, and Jeffrey Burton Russell, emeritus professor of history at UCSB), The Life of the Jura Fathers (Cistercian Publications). Tim recently attended the annual meeting of the North American Patristics Society in Chicago.
Brian Wilson (M.A. 1991, Ph.D. 1996) has had another banner year at the Department of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. In February, he was awarded tenure two years early and promoted to the rank of associate professor. His book Christianity for Ninian Smart’s Brief Religion series (Prentice Hall/Routledge) has gone into Chinese, German, Spanish, and Portuguese editions. Brian continues his collaboration with Thomas Idinopulos (Miami of Ohio); they are currently co-editing a volume of essays entitled Reappraising Durkheim for the Study and Teaching of Religion Today. In addition, Brian is continuing with the revision of his dissertation, “The New World’s Jerusalems,” for Johns Hopkins, working on a religious history of Michigan, and beginning research for a series of articles dealing with the impact of Western Esotericism on American religious history. Administratively, Brian is Director of Graduate Studies in Comparative Religion, co-director of the WMU/Fulbright Summer Institute in American Studies, and Vice President and Program Chair for the Midwest Regional AAR. Next year he will take over as interim director of Western’s American Studies Program, and he is slated to become chair of the Department of Comparative Religion in Fall, 2001.
Wendy M. Wright (M.A .1976, Ph.D. 1983) is Professor of Theology at Creighton University in Omaha (c/o Department of Theology, 2500 California Plaza, Omaha, NE, 68178, (402) 280-2611, wmwright@creighton.edu) and has recently received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Allentown College of Francis de Sales in Pennsylvania, recognizing her scholarly contributions to the Salesian spiritual tradition, the tradition from which the college is founded.
Michiko Yusa (M.A. 1977, Ph.D. 1983), whose sabbatical ended at the end of December 1998, returned to Bellingham, to her life of teaching and writing. She completed the manuscript of the English version of Nishida Kitaro: An Intellectual Biography in the summer 1999. In July she was an invited participant in the Fifth International Lotus Sutra Conference, which met in Tokyo and Aizuwakamatsu, Japan, and gave a paper, “Compassion for the Plants and Trees – An Environmental Message of the Lotus Sutra.” After her vacation in Santa Barbara in August, she set off in September to London to take part in the celebration of the launching of The Future of Religion: Postmodern Perspectives, Essays in Honour of Ninian Smart, edited by Christopher Lamb and Dan Cohn-Sherbok, and published by Middlesex University Press. Her contribution, “From Topos to Environment: A Conversation with Nishida Kitaro,” appeared in that collection. It had been twenty-four years since her first visit to the U.K., and she was overcome by an acute sense of nostalgia. She made day excursions to Nottingham, Cambridge, and Oxford, visiting old friends. For the AAR in Boston, she and Young-chan Ro (George Mason University) organized a panel on “Asian Financial Crisis and Asian Values – A Religious Perspective,” which was well-received. In March of 2000, she vacationed in Santa Barbara again and with the help of her dear poet-friend, she began revising her Nishida MS. She’s still reworking it, and it is now being accepted for publication by University of Hawaii Press. She also went to Japan for a month to conduct field research on the present state of Japanese religions. During that trip she planned on visiting the Ainu people in the northern island of Hokkaido as well as tracing the early history of Shinto in the southern island of Kyushu.
