Teresa M. Shaw is currently the Interim Provost and Associate Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate University (CGU). Teresa Shaw has worked at CGU for 14 years and has served in the Provost’s office since 2000. As Vice Provost at CGU, Teresa is responsible for facilitating to administer all educational affairs and activities, including research and academic personnel in addition to a number of smaller roles to help with the coordination of CGU schools. Teresa has also held prior administrative appointments in the Schools of the Arts and Humanities and the School of Religion.

Teresa is a historian of early Christianity, with research interests in asceticism, heresy, and gender. She holds a PhD from Duke University where her doctoral dissertation focused on abstention in early Christianity.

Teresa is the sole author of The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (1998). One review (found at http://www.amazon.com/Burden-Flesh-Fasting-Sexuality-Christianity) provides a nice summary of Teresa’s book stating,
“Ever wonder how religion, sex and food became linked in thought and behavior in western society? Then read this book. Dr. Shaw has created a wondeful starting point for understanding this strange aspect of our culture. It is highly readable for a work that originated as the author's doctoral dissertation and it is thoroughly referenced.”

Teresa is also the project director for “Models of Piety in Late Antiquity” at the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity (found at
http://iac.cgu.edu/abouttheiac.html#history). The Institute for Antiquity and Christianity is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary center for research into the origins of Western Civilization, the ancient, Near East, the cultures of Greece and Rome, and the emergence of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
 
“Models of Piety in Late Antiquity” brings together a group of scholars interested in religious behavior and self-definition among Christians, Jews, and pagans in the late Mediterranean. The project team works collaboratively to bring research and new ideas on the subject to the table. Meeting once a year, the scholars discuss texts that represent ancient piety and religious behavior through narrative and instruction. The project is in its fifth year.  The group members plan to develop an academic conference on the phenomena surrounding this topic at Claremont in the near future.

At CGU, the notion of transdisciplinary study is embraced and incorporated across the doctoral programs. Teresa believes the transdisciplinary approach, expressing the doubt toward the limited effectiveness of specialization or mono-disciplinarity; “report after report that graduate students have been trained in a pretty narrow, disciplinary manner.” She feels transdisciplinary study is a valuable educational and scholarly experience for students.  The students greatly benefit from learning aspects of another discipline and how different disciplines can truly relate to one another.

When asked about the inspiration for her current research fields, Teresa replied,
"My interest in ancient history and in the history of religion in particular was sparked by travel in the Mediterranean and walking into ancient temples and a Byzantine church." Her continuous energy and search for knowledge is often inspired by "being around and working with good people."

 Creating Transdisciplinary Conversations in TNDY401 & Beyond      


Tea Time - Visting an Australian University