Collegiate Times

Elizabeth Malbon answers a question during her New Testament course.

"I get a lot of my ideas, and we develop a lot of our ideas through undergraduate teaching. It's very easy to ask research questions in undergraduate classes," Britt said. "You could call it learning communities, you could call it the merger of teaching and research that happens in a small program like this. The fruits of our research tend to be primarily single-authored papers and books ... but if you read our footnotes, we often cite each other and thank each other and our students for ideas that we get."

It's a powerfully inviting environment for new faculty like assistant professor of Judaic studies Ben Sax, who arrived on campus in the fall of 2008.

"Just on this side of the hall I have three-world recognized scholars in their craft who are generous with their time and generous with their help. So while you're dealing with the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the university, there's a home with the people that you may not find in other places where egos tend to lead the goals and aspirations of the department," Sax said.

The close academic proximity helps to assuage some of the structural challenges of the university system. While a lack of support for faculty travel and the resources to hire new faculty members are irksome, the paucity of material at Newman Library is the subject of special vitriol.

"The library is our laboratory, it is the basis, the center for our research tools and at the moment it doesn't really serve the needs of our undergraduate teaching much less our research," Britt said.

Perhaps most wounding (and puzzling) to the group is the need to justify their craft in the eyes of the broader university.

"I've spent countless hours explaining to colleagues and administrators what it is we do. It seems counter-intuitive when we equally have Ph.D.s from fairly reputable places," Sax, whose doctorate is from the University of Chicago, said.

Kao, a Harvard Ph.D., added that one needs only to pick up a newspaper to see the import of the religious studies craft.

"On the American stage, you can not understand our basic institutions or even everyday politics unless you know more about religion than what you know confessionally. If anything, I only mean to say I find the question that we would have to justify what we do to be, "Really? Really you have to justify the study of religion?" Kao said.

At a time when budget cuts will cause the dissolution of the department of interdisciplinary studies, the academic home of religious studies, the religious studies faculty do have one significant booster. College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences Dean Sue Ott Rowlands has publicly stated her support for the program.

"She's encouraged us to think big about our future," Britt said.

It's an assurance that comes close to the camaraderie that makes working as a religious studies faculty member at Virginia Tech a unique experience. After putting his daughter to bed one weekday evening, Ben Sax was considering watching college basketball or heading to bed with a book when the phone rang. It was professor Ananda Abeysekara. And he was hopping mad.

Abeysekara had just encountered a particular reading of the German scholar Martin Heidigger he considered violently racist.

"It was entirely because he was so angry about something he was reading that he needed to vent. So by venting to me I got access to this interpretation and wisdom that I wouldn't have otherwise that isn't circumscribed to this place and time - I'll call someone at home. The life of the mind doesn't end at home. I love that," Sax said. "It makes this place immeasurably wonderful."

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