Posted on July 26, 2019 by Ashley Duffalo -
Ariel Cohen is a doctoral candidate in History at the University of Virginia. Between 2014 and 2016, she earned two Master’s degrees: one in Art History (Columbia University) and one in Modern Jewish Studies (Jewish Theological Seminary of America). She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in history at the University of Pennsylvania.
Ariel also has a background in curatorial work. She was the Curatorial Intern of the Abu Dhabi Project at the Guggenheim Museum, a Humanities Fellow at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, UPenn History Department intern for the National Museum of American Jewish History, and a researcher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA).
Ari’s dissertation examines early 20th century collection, donation, and curation of Jewish objects in America. She looks at exhibition spaces such as the Smithsonian, the Jewish Museum in New York, and the Union Museum in Cincinnati to tell a larger story of Jewish self-description and expression in a shifting American democracy.
Posted on July 26, 2019 by vibethink -
Evan Sandsmark is a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He studies philosophy, theology, and ethics, with a research agenda motivated by the problem of evil. His first podcast for the Lab explores the hazards of majority rule through the refugee crisis in Europe, and his second looks at inter-European immigration and the future of the EU.
Posted on July 24, 2019 by Ashley Duffalo -
Deep in the thicket of words, Meghan Hartman emerges. She can be found translating various Urdu, Farsi, and Sanskrit poems, studying furiously in the Teaching Assistant cubicles (aka the cubes) with her friends, and absorbing the various worlds of sound in and outside of her headphones. She also is pursuing a PhD in the Religious Studies department at the University of Virginia. Her dissertation will delve into the Urdu poetry and literary criticism of Mīrā jī, a luminous poet-philosopher of the twentieth century. When she does leave campus, Meghan can be found playing with her favorite four-legged friend Missy, performing sarcastic bits and sketches with her roommates, writing her own poems, or napping.
Posted on July 24, 2019 by Ashley Duffalo -
Caleb Hendrickson received his PhD in religious studies at the University of Virginia in 2020. His work focuses on issues in religion, art, and visual studies. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.
Posted on July 24, 2019 by Ashley Duffalo -
Evan Sandsmark is a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He studies philosophy, theology, and ethics, with a research focus on the problem of evil. He is an editor for The Square, the blog for the Religion and Its Publics project. He has an MA in Theology and Religion from Durham University, and a BA in philosophy and English literature from the University of Colorado.
Posted on July 24, 2019 by vibethink -
Before joining the Lab, Duffalo spent 13 years working at the Walker Art Center, a contemporary art museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where her various roles allowed her to develop public programs for youth, families, and adults; manage large-scale artist residencies; and oversee the graphic design studio. She also served on and chaired the board of a non-profit arts organization, Kulture Klub Collaborative, which brings together artists and homeless youth in the Twin Cities.
Posted on July 23, 2019 by Ashley Duffalo -
Jeannie Sellick is a PhD student in Religious Studies, concentrating on Judaism & Christianity in Antiquity. She has an MPhil from Oxford in Late Antique & Byzantine studies. Jeannie’s masters dissertation, “Foul & Holy Love,” explored the problems created by mixing biological and spiritual families within monastic life. Her current research focuses on marital and sexual anxieties in early Christian ascetic movements.
Posted on July 23, 2019 by Ashley Duffalo -
Micah Ariel Watson is a filmmaker and playwright whose work centers the blurred lines between the sacred and secular in Black culture. Her films have screened across the continent, including TIFF Cinematheque and BlackStar Film Festival. Originally from Wichita, KS, she is a 2018 graduate of the University of Virginia and an MFA candidate at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Posted on July 23, 2019 by Ashley Duffalo -
Paige Taul is an Oakland, CA native who received her B.A in Studio Art with a concentration in cinematography from the University of Virginia in 2018. She currently attends the University of Illinois at Chicago for her M.F.A. Her work focuses on themes of blackness in relation to self and family.
Posted on February 19, 2019 by Ashley Duffalo -
Federico Cuatlacuatl is an Indigenous artist born in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico. He received his MFA specializing in Digital Arts at the Bowling Green State University. Federico’s work is invested in disseminating topics of Latinx immigration, social art practice, and cultural sustainability. Building from his own experience growing up as an undocumented immigrant and previously holding DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), Federico’s research is primarily concerned with pressing realities in current social, political, and cultural issues that Latinx undocumented immigrants face in the U.S. Federico’s independent productions have been screened in various national and international film festivals in Mexico; USA; Canada; Finland; Athens, Greece; Delph, England; Lucknow, India; Paris, France; and the Azores Islands off of Portugal. As founder and director of the Rasquache Artist Residency in Puebla, Mexico, he actively stays involved in socially engaged works and binational endeavors.
Posted on November 9, 2018 by Ashley Duffalo -
My research interests lie in the history of philosophy, with special attention to the history of Buddhist philosophy in South Asia. Topics of particular interest to me include the philosophy of mind, action and philosophical anthropology. I believe the history of Buddhist philosophy in South Asia is best pursued keeping in view the long conversations of Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophers in South Asia, and also the importance of narrative thought for the history of ideas.
My first monograph (now available from Columbia University Press) is entitled Other Lives: Mind, and World in Indian Buddhism. It offers a new interpretation of the Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu. You can read more about it here.
I am working on a book (under advance contract with the University of Virginia Press, tentatively titled Attention: An Indian Buddhist Story). The book presents the history of Buddhism in South Asia as a history of (sometimes competing) normative paradigms of attention, exploring the ways in which one might think to evaluate mind and consciousness in the context of practices of self. Complementing the project on attention, I have begun a (very) long term project, “Practices of Self in Antiquity: Between Athens and Pataliputra,” guided by the multi-lingual edicts of the Buddhist Emperor Aśoka. The hope is to provide the materials for a new history of the practices and hermeneutics of self, an account of the vocabularies and practices that once constituted a connected climate of philosophical culture and therapy in antiquity.
Posted on November 9, 2018 by Ashley Duffalo -
John Edwin Mason teaches African history and the history of photography. He has written extensively on early nineteenth-century South Africa history, especially the history of slavery, South African popular culture, especially the Cape Town New Year’s Carnival and jazz, and the history of photography. He is now working on “Gordon Parks and American Democracy,” a book about the ways in which Parks’ Life magazine photo-essays on social justice and the books that he published during the civil rights era challenged Americans’ notions of citizenship and, at the same time, made him one of the era’s most significant interpreters of the black experience. He is also a documentary photographer with a long-term interest in exploring race and gender in American motor sports. Until recently, he was an active musician, performing with the Charlottesville and University Symphony Orchestra, the Lynchburg (Virginia) Symphony Orchestra, and the New Lyric Theatre, among many other groups. He contributes regularly to Ellingtonia, the publication of the Duke Ellington Society.
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