Faculty Authored Books

Associate Professor Muhamad Ali's most recent monograph, Islam and Colonialism: Becoming Modern in Indonesia and Malaya (2015) looks at how European colonial and Islamic modernizing powers operated in the common and parallel domains of government and politics, law and education in the first half of the twentieth century. It shows that colonialization was able to co-exist with Islamization, and Muslims in Indonesia and Malaya adopted and adapted modern ideas and practices that were useful or relevant while maintaining the Islamic faith and ritual that they believed to be essential.

Assistant Professor Elyse Ambrose's most recent monograph, A Blackqueer Sexual Ethics: Embodiment, Possibility, and Living Archive (2024), looks to an archive of Blackqueerness as an authoritative source for religious ethical reflection. This approach counters the disintegrative norms of anti-Black and anti-body traditionalism in Christian sexual ethics, even those that strive to be liberative. It builds upon a tradition of Black queer and LGBTQ+-centered critique at the intersections of race, sexuality, gender, and religion through exploring the moral imagination of sexual and gender non-conformist communities. 

Associate Professor Ana Bajželj’s latest co-authored publication, Insistent Life: Principles for Bioethics in the Jain Tradition (2021) offers interdisciplinary insight on the issue of bioethics in Jainism. The Jain tradition, steeped in ethical understandings of the body, offers a rich locale for such a study–with examinations of historical Jain texts as well as contemporary practices, Insistent Life is the first work of its kind. 

Professor Matthew King's latest translation, co-authored with Khenpo Kunga Sherab, is the first of two volumes of The Amazing Treasury of the Sakya Lineage (2024). Sherab and King capture a truly remarkable period in Buddhist and Asian history at the rise of the Mongol Empire. Here, Ameshab Ngakwang Kunga Sonam (1597–1659), a member of the Khon aristocracy and the twenty-seventh throne holder of Sakya Monastery, offers a narrative that recounts the lives of numerous iconic leaders of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. 

In Professor Matthew King’s latest monograph, In the Forest of the Blind: The Eurasian Journey of Faxian’s Record of Buddhist Kingdoms (2022), King examines the travelogue writings of 5th-century Chinese monk, Faxian. Faxian’s text was taken up transnationally, sparking interest amongst the thinkers like Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. In this monograph, King re-examines the dissemination of the text and offers new conceptions of Inner Asian Buddhism and new perspectives on decolonial methodology.

Professor Matthew King's first monograph, Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood (2018) takes up the perspective of the polymath Zava Damdin (1867–1937): a historian, mystic, logician, and pilgrim whose life and works straddled the Qing and its socialist aftermath, between the monastery and the party scientific academy.  Through a rich reading of his works, King reveals that modernity in Asia was not always shaped by epochal contact with Europe and that new models of Buddhist life, neither imperial nor national, unfolded in the post-Qing ruins. This is the first book to explore countermodern Buddhist monastic thought and practice along the Inner Asian frontiers during these tumultuous years, and offers an unparalleled view of Buddhist life in the revolutionary period.

Professor Amanda Lucia's most recent edited volume (co-authored with the late Maya Warrier) is volume 6: The Age of Independence (1947-2017), in A Cultural History of Hinduism, vols. 1-6, edited by Karen Pechilis (2024). Spanning over 4,000 years, these volumes provide an authoritative survey of one of the world's oldest religious traditions in its social and cultural contexts, from ancient times to the present. With 55 experts from multiple academic disciplines, the work represents inclusive narratives and aims to generate new cultural history questions.

Professor Amanda Lucia’s most recent monograph, White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals (2020) utilizes years of ethnographic data from festivals like Burning Man, Lightening in a Bottle, and Bhakti Fest to examine how festivals might facilitate religious experience. Lucia offers unique analyses of the primarily “Spiritual But Not Religious” (SBNR) individuals that attend these festivals, most of whom are white. White Utopias offers important new perspectives on transformational festivals as racialized spaces of SBNR formation. 

Professor Amanda Lucia's first monograph, Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace (2014), focuses on global devotees of Mata Amritanandamayi, globally known as Amma, meaning "Mother." Amma is familiar to millions as the “hugging saint,” a moniker that derives from her elaborate darshan programs wherein nearly every day ten thousand people are embraced by the guru one at a time, events that routinely last ten to twenty hours without rest.  This study shows how devotees endeavor to mirror their guru’s behaviors, and argues that “inheritors” and “adopters” of Hindu traditions differently interpret Amma, and her values, and her religio-cultural context. 

In Making Peace with the Universe: Personal Crisis and Spiritual Healing (2020), Professor Michael Scott Alexander examines the phenomenon of individual existential crisis and the ways religion often combats these crises, despite popular secular-medical means of healing. Utilizing a broad set of source material from Socrates to jazz musician and Catholic convert Mary Lou Williams, Alexander examines the ways in which religious and spiritual endeavors become legitimate and transformational therapeutic tools. 

Professor Pashaura Singh's most recent monograph, The Routledge Companion to the Life and Legacy of Guru Hargobind (2024) studies the life and legacy of Guru Hargobind (1590-1644), the Sixth Guru of the Sikh tradition. It highlights the complex nature of Sikh society and culture in the historical and socio-economic context of Mughal India. The book addresses the questions of why and how militancy became explicit during Guru Hargobind's spiritual reign and examines the growth of the Sikh community's self-consciousness, separatism, and militancy as an integral part of the process of empowerment of the Sikh Panth.

Professor Pashaura Singh’s foundational work in the field of Sikh studies is evident in his edited volume, The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies (2014). The volume offers an important comprehensive examination of the field of Sikh studies from its foundational texts to its major scholars and theories. A key introductory survey, The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies shows the history of a developing field, and proposes ways of thinking toward its future.

Department chair and Professor Melissa Wilcox’s Queer Religiosities: An Introduction to Queer and Transgender Studies in Religion (2020) offers a first-of-its-kind comprehensive review of queer and transgender studies in religion. This accessible and comparative monograph provides a much needed introductory survey of the key concepts, thinkers, and theories important to the field of queer and transgender studies in religion. 

In Queer Nuns (2018), Professor Melissa Wilcox offers an ethnographic examination of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an order of self-described “queer nuns” founded by a group of gay men who, after decided to don nuns’ habits and walk through the streets of San Fransisco, created a global movement. In examining how the Sisters parody their proximity to religious life while upholding and taking seriously their religious status, Wilcox examines how the Sisters bring together conversations of queerness, religiosity, and activism.

Professor Melissa Wilcox's 2013 monograph, Religion in Today's World: Global Issues, Sociological Perspectives, provides an innovative collection of original essays and classic readings, wherein experts explore the significance of contemporary religiosity. Wilcox shows how religion is a source of meaning and motivation, how it unites and divides us, and how it is used politically and culturally. Readers will be introduced to the broad debates in ways that will equip them to analyze, discuss, and make their own judgments about religion and society. 

Professor Melissa Wilcox co-edited a volume on Sexuality and the World's Religions with David Machacek in 2003. Exploring one of the most controversial topics in contemporary theology, this scholarly volume reveals what the world's great faiths—East and West—preach about sexuality, with a special emphasis on American religion. A separate section explores critical religious and sexual topics in American society, including the role of spirituality in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities; the role of sex in the modern witchcraft community; and the ever thorny problem of religion and sexual liberty.