The School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at ASU is committed to maintaining excellence in the major fields of history, philosophy and religious studies and to emphasizing its contemporary relevance as well as participating in innovative programs that connect history, philosophy and religion to other areas of inquiry.
Arizona State University encourages cross-disciplinary studies, and our strengths are complemented by those in other departments and colleges within ASU.
History
Aviña, Alexander (Associate Professor) - Social Movements and State Violence in 20th century Mexico and Guerrero; Capitalism, Drugs, and Drug Wars; Cold War Latin America; the Left in Modern Mexico and Latin America; Sports in Latin America
Barnes, Andrew (Professor) - Christianity, Christian Missions, African History, Europe
Cichopek-Gajraj, Anna (Associate Professor) - Modern East European Jewish history, Holocaust and post-Holocaust studies, modern history of Poland, history of antisemitism and anti-Jewish violence, comparative and social studies, theories of ethnicity, nationalism, identity, and belonging
Critchlow, Donald (Professor) - Modern American political and policy history, particularly in how actors perceive the world and act on their perceptions
El Hamel, Chouki (Professor) - The intellectual history of Islam and Islamic institutions in Northwest and West Africa
Fixico, Donald (Regents Professor) - American Indians, oral history and the U.S. West
Harris, Lauren (Professor) - History education and world history
Holian, Anna (Associate Professor) - Late modern Europe; migration and displacement; architecture and urban history; film studies
Jones, Christopher (Professor) – Energy, economics, and environmental history, sustainability, history of technology
Manchester, Laurie (Associate Professor) - Russia, diaspora culture, return migration, autobiographical practices, religion
O'Donnell, Catherine (Professor) - Early American history; culture and religion; American political thought
Saikia, Yasmin (Professor) - South Asia, Muslim identity and history, gender and violence, memory, children's history of the present
Samuelson, Hava (Regents Professor) – Jewish intellectual history, feminism and Jewish philosophy; religion and ecology; religion, science, and technology
Schermerhorn, J. Calvin (Professor) - 19th-Century African American history, capitalism and slavery, the Atlantic World
Tebeau, Mark (Associate Professor) - US urban and social history, landscape, and place, oral history, public history, digital humanities
Philosophy
Blackson, Thomas (Associate Professor) - ancient philosophy and issues connected to artificial intelligence and rationality
De Marneffe, Peter (Professor) - liberty and liberalism, individual rights, and government paternalism
DesRoches, Tyler (Associate Professor) – environmental philosophy, economics, philosophy of science, sustainability
Kung, Peter (Associate Professor) - philosophy of mind, imagination, epistemology
McGregor, Joan (Professor) - ethics of sustainability, food justice, legal philosophy, practical philosophy
Nair, Shyam (Associate Professor) - ethics, epistemology, philosophical logic, philosophy of language
Phillips, Ben (Associate Professor) - perception, social cognition, theory of mind
Pinillos, N. Angel (Professor) - philosophy of language, epistemology, experimental philosophy, and related areas
Portmore, Douglas (Professor) - morality, rationality, and the interconnections between the two, also well-being, posthumous harm, and the non-identity problem
Religious Studies
Miguel Astor Aguilera (Associate Professor) - Ethnography, iconography and archaeology. Aguilera specializes in Mesoamerican cosmologies and their historical traditions: pre-Columbian, colonial and contemporary. His work is focused on Maya religious specialists in the Yucatán peninsula.
Jason Bruner (Professor) - The history of Christian missions and the growth of Christianity in Africa and Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries; history of medicine.
John Carlson (Associate Professor) - Religious ethics, religion and politics, political philosophy, and Christianity and the political order. His research areas include just war thought, religion and violence, human rights, and issues of religion and American public life. Carlson is also Interim Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at ASU.
Huaiyu Chen (Associate Professor) - Chinese religions, with a joint appointment in the School of International Letters and Cultures. His research interests span Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity and medieval Chinese social history.
Eugene Clay (Professor) - Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Russian religious history.
Tracy Fessenden (Professor) - Gender and religion, specializing in western religious traditions, religion and literature, and American religious and cultural history.
Joel D. Gereboff (Associate Professor) - Judaism with special interests in Rabbinic Judaism and religion and ethics.
Chad Haines (Associate Professor) - Cultural Anthropology, Islam, Pakistan, South Asia, the Muslim world, globalization, urban transformation, postcoloniality, Dubai, Cairo, everyday ethics and peace.
Alexander Henn (Professor) - Special interests in processes of cultural and religious encounter and the history and ethnography of colonial conquest in India.
Agnes Kefeli Clay (Clinical Professor) - Islam with special interests in Muslim minorities in Russia, Islam in Central Asia and Ottoman Turkish history.
Han Hsien Liew (Assistant Professor) - Islam with special interests in medieval Islamic political thought; premodern Islamic scholarly culture and transmission of knowledge; Qur’anic exegesis (tafsir); and Arabic-Islamic historical and biographical writings.
Leah Sarat (Associate Professor) - The intersection of religion and migration in Mexico and the Southwest Borderlands, with particular attention to the social and religious implications of U.S.-Mexico border enforcement policy.
Tod Swanson (Associate Professor) -Christian Studies and religion in Latin American with special interest in native traditions of the Americas.
Shahla Talebi (Associate Professor) - Specializing in issues of religion and state, and the performative role of language and metaphor as it relates to discourses of self-sacrifice and martyrdom within Islam and Iran.