pgmpeace

This is a little late in coming, but I thought I'd just drop the info in there. I thought I'd let y'all know that I have accepted an offer to work under Scott Bartchy at UCLA. The specialty is technically called "History of Religions," but I will mostly be concentrating on Christian origins. I talked to Bartchy over the phone on February 1st, when he was down to the final two people for one spot. I received my acceptance letter from the Graduate Division by email on Feb. 23 (it was oddly dated Feb 6th) and from the History Dept on March 2. I'm interested in social concerns (Bartchy) and apocalypticism (Ra'anan Boustan) in early Christianity and Judaism. There's a lot of freedom to the program, so I'll be able to take classes in the NELC and Classics departments as well. It's a good fit for what I'm looking for!

Don't know if anyone else here applied to the program, but I thought I'd let y'all know that I have accepted an offer to work under Scott Bartchy in UCLA's Department of History. The specialty is technically called "History of Religions," but I will be concentrating on Christian origins and New Testament. I talked to Bartchy over the phone on February 1st, when he was down to the final two people for one spot. I received my acceptance letter from the Graduate Division by email on Feb. 23 (it was oddly dated Feb 6th) and from the History Dept on March 2. I'm interested in social concerns (Bartchy) and apocalypticism (Ra'anan Boustan) in early Christianity and Judaism. There's a lot of freedom to the program, so I'll be able to take classes in the NELC and Classics departments as well. It works perfectly for me and I'm stoked

Hi religionstudent, I have a bunch of friends at Duke's Religious Studies Dept and, as you mentioned, they tell me that there is a lot of interaction between the two schools. I know Duke people in early Christianity and in New Testament who have Bart Ehrman (from UNC) on their committee, for example. I don't know your subfield, but it doesn't seem like you can really make a wrong decision here. If you've got big names at UNC and you think you'd get along with them, I'd go for it. Or if you think you'd be happier with the program setup at Duke, at least you'd still get to work with the UNC folks. If Duke doesn't have people you'd want to work with primarily, if it were me, I'd go with UNC. But if everything were equal in my mind (the quality and approachability of the profs, the program setups, etc.), I would go to Duke for the name. That's just me.

My understanding is that SMU is a solid school and well-respected. A 2006 PhD grad under Marshall (Sharon Baker) is now teaching at my alma mater, Messiah College. Baker is an excellent scholar. I don't see any other dissertations listed under either Marshall or Karras, but it looks like they just got to the school fairly recently (2001 and 2005), so they haven't had a chance to churn out the students yet. If it were me, and it fit my interests and offered me the cash, I'd take it. You're going to have to prove yourself with teaching and publications anyway. After you start to prove yourself as a good scholar and educator, I don't think the fact that SMU is second tier will really make that big of a difference. But you obviously have to choose based on your own goals and interests.