Mentor

Mentoring undergraduate researchers is an important part of my work at Elon and often the most rewarding. I frequently mentor students who are part of our fellows programs, including Honors Fellows, but am happy to work with students outside of these cohorts on developing a research project.

Because of this commitment to mentoring undergraduates, I served as Director of the Elon Honors Program from 2018-2022. I also participated in a consultation on undergraduate research in religious studies funded by the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning and organized by Drs. Toddie Peter and Bernadette McNary-Zak. As a result, I contributed a co-written (with Dr. John Lanci) essay on mentoring to the volume Teaching Undergraduate Research in Religious Studies (Oxford UP, 2011).

The students I mentor include majors in religious studies, classical studies, Jewish studies, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, art history (typically co-mentored with Dr. Evan Gatti), and even psychology. Their projects are creative and varied and most students have presented their work at regional professional conferences and even published in undergraduate research journals. Research students also work alongside of me in the classroom as teaching and learning assistants.

Jasper Myers leading a class session.

Recent Mentored Projects

Olivia Lancashire, Intersections Between Christian Ideas of Hell and Religious Trauma

Jasper Myers, Female Same-Sex Erotic Encounters in the Ancient Mediterranean Religious Landscape     

Faith Minor, Trans Jewish Interpretation of Avraham and Sarah

Virginia Beall, Queer Depictions of Jesus on TikTok

Molly Morrison, Apprehending the Goddess: Cybele’s Transition to Romanhood

Phoebe Mock, Sex and Sex Acts: Reading the Erotic Frescoes and Graffiti in the Purpose-Built Brothel and the Suburban Baths of Pompeii

Victoria Oakley, Rome’s Vestal Mother: Analyzing the Sex, Gender, and Power Dynamics of Rhea Silvia’s Rape within Augustan Culture

Alexandra McCorkle, In W.O.D. We Trust: Christianity, CrossFit, and Conversion

Shelby Lewis, Ruth, Naomi and the Lesbian Continuum: Reading an Ancient Text in Light of Twentieth Century Lesbian Fiction

Erin Palmer, Imagining Spaces: The Function of Imagined Sacred Space in Ezekiel and Revelation

Kiva Nice-Webb, The Hybrid Saint: Reading Brigit through a Postcolonial Lens