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Department of Religion

Columbian College of Arts & Sciences

2025 Religion Newsletter

Columbian College Department of Religion. A group of four students talking

Message from the Chair
Department Spotlights
Faculty and Student Kudos
Alumni Class Notes 

Message from the Chair

Irene Oh

Greetings to all of our alumni from the George Washington University Religion Department and Peace Studies Program! In this newsletter, you’ll read about a few of the exciting things happening in the department, including the achievements of our community of alumni, faculty and students.

Thank you so much for your support and involvement. Please stay in touch. 

Sincerely,

Dr. Irene Oh
Department Chair

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Department Spotlights 

 

Amanda Tyler presenting on “Christian Nationalism and the Threat to Democracy and Faith.”
Amanda Tyler presenting on “Christian Nationalism and the Threat to Democracy and Faith.” 

Berz Endowed Lecture with Amanda Tyler

For the 2024 Berz Endowed Lecture, Amanda Tyler from the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty presented on “Christian Nationalism and the Threat to Democracy and Faith” before an engaged audience of students, staff, faculty, the dean and our benefactors, David and Sherry Berz. 

 

Micro-lectures, or RELx Talks, introduced GW students, staff and other faculty to the work of the department.
Micro-lectures, or RELx Talks, introduced GW students, staff and other faculty to the work of the department.

Inaugural RELx Talks for Interfaith Week

At the invitation of the Center for Interfaith and Spiritual Life, majors in the department joined the faculty in presenting “mini-lectures,” or RELx Talks, to introduce current research, next projects and intriguing questions in the field to the wider GW community.

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Faculty and Student Kudos

  • Sayed Akhlaq authored The Caliph and the Imam: The Making of Sunnism and Shiism (Taylor & Francis) in January 2025, along with numerous articles.
  • Eyal Aviv organized two conferences this year: “Agency and Experience Buddhist & Cognitive Perspectives” at Princeton University and “Huayan/Hwaŏm/Kegon Buddhism” at American University. In an edited volume on Chinese philosophy by Bloomsbury, he also published a chapter titled, “Chinese Buddhist Philosophy in the Twentieth Century.”
  • Mohammad Faghfoory served as a reader and referee for multiple journals and supervised graduate student theses and dissertations as an outside reader. He also translated and annotated A Sufi Commentary on the Tao Te Ching by colleague Seyyed Nasr from the Persian to English.
  • Xiaofei Kang received the prestigious Joseph Levenson Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies for her recent publication, Enchanted Revolution: Ghosts, Shamans, and Gender Politics in Chinese Communist Propaganda, 1942-1953 (Oxford University Press).
  • Derek Malone-France participated in a symposium on conservation and peacebuilding at the Colombian Embassy in D.C. and is part of a working group on ecological conflict and cooperation convened by the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization.
  • Eli McCarthy was named “Peacemaker of the Year” by Pax-Christi DC-Metro Region in November 2024. He has authored several academic and popular articles, including “Centering Active Nonviolence in Catholic Social Teaching” for Political Theology. He also traveled to Rome to present on “Active Nonviolence and Legitimate Defense” for Catholic Synod participants.
  • Seyyed Nasr virtually addressed multiple international conferences from London to Istanbul. He published multiple articles, forewords and translations. His most recent book, Return to the Eternal Abode: Sufi Dialogues with Seyyed Hossein Nasr (SUNY Press), was released in January 2025 with co-author Amira El-Zein.
  • Irene Oh organized the winter issue of the Journal of Religious Ethics that focused on the future of the field. She also presented a working paper on artificial intelligence and religion to multiple audiences, including the University Seminar on AI and the Humanities.
  • Religion majors Sylvia Cassidy and Claire Gale received the Yeidi Prize in the Religion Department.
  • Senior Alanna Moskowitz was featured in the GW Today article “How I Got the Job: Interning at Washington’s Hallowed Institutions” for leveraging on-campus opportunities into internships at both the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House.
  • Aidan Puchalik received the Theta Alpha Kappa (Honorary Society for Religious Studies) Undergraduate Achievement Award and was selected for the Theta Alpha Kappa Albert Clark Award for his article, “Freedom Through Religion: How the Nation of Islam Sparked the Modern Prisoners' Rights Movement.”
  • Department and program faculty and students gathered in December 2024 for an end-of-semester pizza party for majors, minors and friends of the program—especially for celebrating graduating students!

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Alumni Class Notes

Matthew DeGioia, BA ’13, owns and operates DeGioia Law, PLLC, which focuses on estate planning and disability benefits matters in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. He is also a staff attorney with Christian Legal Aid of the District of Columbia.

Ethan Goldblatt, BA ’23, served as special assistant at the United States Mission to the United Nations, taking the lessons from GW’s peace studies courses to the Security Council as they made critical decisions during a tumultuous time in international peace and security.

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