Nine Graduate Students Receive Loeb Fellowships

Harvard Divinity School announces nine recipients of John L. Loeb Fellowships for summer and term-time research in 2009. These fellowships (ordinarily $10,000 each) are awarded to students engaged in research on topics dealing with religious freedom, religious tolerance, and/or the protection of religious minorities worldwide. Projects deal with historical, cultural, social, political, and/or economic aspects of these issues, and applications are received from students across the University.

This year's recipients, their fields of study, and the titles of their projects are as follows: Sa'ed Adel Atshan, Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies, "The Anthropology of Peacemaking in Lebanon"; Christopher Bail, Sociology, "Homeland Insecurity: The Evolution of Symbolic Boundaries Towards Muslims in the United States and United Kingdom, 2001-07"; Eric Calderwood, Romance Languages and Literatures, a project on a sometimes clandestine Spanish Muslim minority community; Sarah Eltantawi, Religion, "Stoning in the Islamic Tradition: The Case of Northern Nigeria"; Marc M. Gidal, Ethnomusicology, "Afro-Gaucho Religion and Music: Performing Community in Southern Brazil and Beyond"; Marc R. Loustau, Theology, "The Csíksomlyó Pilgrimage and the Construction of Hungarian National Culture in Transylvania, 1919-Present"; Dinyar Patel, History, a project on the roots of the discourse on minority rights and secularism within modern Indian political philosophy; Devaka Premawardhana, Religion, "Transnational Pentecostalism: The Discourse of Spiritual Warfare in Brazilian Missions to Mozambique"; and Mara Willard, Religion and Society in the Modern West, "False Idols: Hazardous Foundations of Religion and Nationalism."

This Loeb Fellowship program, which is administered by Harvard Divinity School through an agreement with Harvard Business School, is made possible by the support of John L. Loeb, Jr., AB '52, MBA '54.

—by Jonathan Beasley