Thank you for your response!
I totally get the Buddhism point - I work on 20th and 21st-century evangelicalism and apocalypticism, so definitely outside their normal wheelhouse. There is one Americanist on the faculty, but I'd also be working with a new interdisciplinary group of faculty members across the university who work on American religions (anthropologists, historians, etc.). It's a new program, but I'm getting the sense that they do want to invest more in the America track, and they've said they're going to be hiring a few Americanists over the next few years.
NYC is great, but I did my MA at Columbia and have lived in the city for a long time, so I might be up for a change :) at the end of the day, I think both schools are great, which makes it all the more difficult to choose!
