The Graduate Group in Religious Studies is pleased to announce the recipients of several annual prizes.
Rushnae Kabir, a PhD student in Religious Studies, received the Ibn Sina Prize for “Pious Registers: Interrogating the Elite/Popular Divide Through the Milād.” Reviewers described the paper, which examines the mīlād ritual that commemorates the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, as “theoretically sophisticated” and as a “key intervention in the study of South Asian Islam.”
Shrinidhi Narasimhan, a PhD student in South Asia Studies, received the Ibn Sina Prize for her paper, “The Story of Ḥasan Bey: Print, Reform, and Colonial Modernity in the Indian Ocean World.” One reviewer described the paper as “an innovative exploration of the poorly studied place of Islam in Sri Lanka,” and another praised its “incisive analysis of the intersection of colonial modernity, emergent transnational Islam (or Islams), and local currents in the context of the rise of modern Tamil prose literature.”
Jeremy Steinberg, a PhD candidate in Religious Studies, received the Merle Saunders Schaff Prize for his paper, "Josephus, Historiography, and the Nature of the Bible.” A reviewer wrote that "Steinberg’s ... claim that Josephus treated the Hebrew Bible as history in order to align it with Greek methods of composition and literary categories was compelling and clear. Additionally, his description of Josephus’s theory of translation .... provided opportunity for reflection on broader humanistic questions about conceptions of accuracy in both 'history' and 'translation.'”
Recipients will receive their awards at the Religious Studies End of Year Celebration on May 2, 2024.