Dr. Terry Shoemaker
Lecturer
School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies
Arizona State University
Terry Shoemaker, Ph.D., received his doctorate in Religious Studies from Arizona State University. He has worked conducting religious studies research, teaching in the classroom, curriculum development, and student mentoring over the last ten years. His research focuses on the ways in which religion is both a site of resistance and repair within the American society and religion’s role in social justice efforts. As a site of social justice inquiry, Terry’s research has investigated marginalization pertaining to disability, race, and religious affiliations. He is currently a Lecturer at ASU and teaches courses on Religion, Culture, Public Life; Religion in America; and Religion and Popular Culture. Dr. Shoemaker has worked with Harvard’s Pluralism Project and the Interfaith Youth Core in both documenting religious diversity in America and cultivating religious dialogue on college campuses.
Dr. Yasmin Saikia
Professor
Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies
School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies
Arizona State University
Yasmin Saikia is the Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict and a professor of history in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. Her work focuses on the histories of memory and identity; women, war, and peace; histories of premodern and contemporary South Asia (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) and engaging the history of Islam and Islamic values of peace. As the Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies she advances the study of peace with a more humanities-oriented approach by paying attention to culture, history, and individual and group agency. As a historian of South Asia, she is concerned with religion, gender, identity and memory in South Asia. She is the author of the award-winning books, "Fragmented Memory: Struggling to be Tai-Ahom in India" (Duke, 2005) and "Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971" (Duke 2010). As well, she has edited several books and has published over three dozen peer-reviewed articles and essays. Her concern for the vulnerable and marginalized in society who are often the targets of hatred and violence drives her passion for advancing scholarly and public understanding of peace studies using a historical approach. Currently, she is writing a trilogy on ‘People’s Peace’ and is researching on select Muslim revolutionaries of the interwar period (1920-1940) for writing a monograph on the "Muslim Imagination of Freedom from British Colonialism." Saikia hails from Assam in northeast India and has deep connections with scholars and public in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Turkey.
Dr. Catherine O'Donnell
Professor
School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies
Arizona State University
Catherine O'Donnell is Professor of History at Arizona State University. She is the author of Elizabeth Seton: American Saint (Cornell University Press, 2018), which was awarded the Distinguished Book Award by the Conference on the History of Women Religious, for books published from 2016-2018, as well as the Biography Prize from the Catholic Press Association. She is also the author of Men of Letters in the Early Republic (Chapel HIll, 2008) and articles appearing in venues including the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Early Republic, Early American Literature, and the US Catholic Historian. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on early American history and the Atlantic World.
