2022 Religious Studies Publications and Grants

* Indicates student co-author

Chung-Kim, Esther. “Johannes Bugenhagen and Christian III: Reforming Church and Society in Denmark.Lutheranism and Social Responsibility, edited by Nina J. Koefoed and Andrew G. Newby. Vandenhoek & Ruprecht Gmbh & Co, 2022, pp. 21-46.


Chung-Kim, Esther. “Pious City: Community and Charity in Calvin’s Geneva.” Archive for Reformation History, vol. 113, issue 1, 2022, pp. 168-197.

Abstract: The article explores discipline and poor relief in Geneva. As the disciplinarians, the Consistory’s pastors and magistrates worked together to resolve disputes and maintain order. They implemented discipline and poor relief by redefining community, resolving social tension, establishing moral standards, and promoting communal care. Calvin emphasized unity and responsibility to help resolve conflicts. Calvin promoted a high moral standard to create an image of a “deserving community” that improved donations and financial support for poor relief. Calvin’s leadership in the Company of Pastors, the Consistory, and the French Fund, led lay people to practice godly living in their work and life. Calvin fostered a pious Reformed Geneva and provided a working model for supporting citizens and refugees for poor relief in Europe.


Chung-Kim, Esther, “Reforming Church and Society in Denmark: Johannes Bugenhagen and Christian III in the Scandinavian Reformation.” Lutheranism and Social Responsibility, edited by. Nina J. Koeford and Andrew G. Newby. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2022, pp. 21-45.

Abstract: Once King Christian III of Denmark decided to reform the churches, he needed capable Lutheran ministers to implement the reform. Many of his letters contained invitations to Lutheran ministers to fill vacant bishoprics and to assist him in the religious reform of his country. His invitation to Wittenberg reformer Johannes Bugenhagen, who first met the young Christian when he was duke of Schleswig-Holstein at the 1529 Flensburger Disputation, meant that Bugenhagen would assist in establishing the Reformation of Denmark. Bugenhagen’s vision for the Reformation promoted the reform of church and society, which included social responsibility for church, schools, and poverty alleviation. Specifically, he promoted the training and leadership of pastors, installed social responsibility for education by repairing university buildings, making recommendations for professors, giving lectures, and serving as rector himself.  Though the correspondence between Bugenhagen and Christian III lasted throughout their lives, some limiting factors in their friendship included social hierarchy and political circumstances. Despite its limits, the relationship between Bugenhagen and Christian III portrayed a fascinating example of the close collaboration between reformer and ruler in early modern Europe. Under their leadership, local and national administrations were centralized.


Chung-Kim, Esther. “Working Women in Poor Relief: Midwives, Nurses, and Deaconesses.” Women Reformers in Early Modern Europe: Profiles, Texts and Contexts, edited by Kirsi Stjerna. Fortress Press, 2022, pp. 291-300.

Abstract: While scholars of early modern poor relief have long recognized that many of its recipients were women, recent research has revealed the various roles that women played in alleviating poverty. The activities of early modern women disrupted the standard narratives in women’s history that mostly deemed women as passive recipients of charity rather than providers of it. A closer look at working women in both the Protestant and Catholic regions reveals that female spirituality informed many working women in support of religious and social institutions because these women believed that their communities needed their services. This study demonstrates that working women contributed to poor relief most commonly as midwives, nurses, and deaconesses. Thus, women played an active part in poor relief institutions and the charity system as providers of service to sustain their communities, including those at the margins.

Espinosa, Gastón. “Latinos Shifting Republican? Evangelical, Pentecostal, Catholic Charismatic Voting in the 2020 Election in the U.S., Florida, and Texas,” Pneuma: The Journal for the Society of Pentecostal Studies 44 (Brill Academic Press, Netherlands) (2022): 380-414.

Martinez, Chloe. “Ars Poetica in Five Easy Pieces: on Flashlights, Bears, and Disregarding Your Own Advice.” DMQ Review, August 2022.


Martinez, Chloe. “Chagall’s A Wheatfield on a Summer’s Afternoon at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.” Poem. AGNI 95, April 15 2022.


Martinez, Chloe. “Guest #21: I Can Hear It!” Interview with Robin Myers. Palette Poetry, January 27, 2022.


Martinez, Chloe. “Heads,” and “Plumeria.” Poems. Couplet Poetry 3, May 2022.


Martinez, Chloe. “Intermediate” and “Tiny Gitas.” Poems. “Reading the Gita.” Essay. Consequence, 14.1, Spring 2022.


Martinez, Chloe, translator. “Mira’s Colors,” by Mirabai. Poem. Poetry Foundation, May 2022.


Martinez, Chloe. “At the Prado,” and “Having Never Visited the Ghent Altarpiece.” Poems. TriQuarterly, Winter/Spring 2022.


Martinez, Chloe. “Prose from Poetry Magazine: On ‘Mira’s Colors’.” Poetry Foundation, May 2 2022.


Martinez, Chloe. “Seascape” and “Juego de Manos.” Poems. Mom Egg Review/MER VOX Folio, March 2022.


Martinez, Chloe. “Spine,” and “The Cupid Revealed in the Restoration of Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window Talks Back.” Poems. Southeast Review, Fall 2022.


Martinez, Chloe. “Woman Dancing” and “Comet.” Poems. Beloit Poetry Journal, vol. 71, no. 2, 2022, pp. 23-25.


Martinez, Chloe. “A Year in, I Find the Book About Rembrandt’s Copies of Mughal Miniatures at the Bottom of a Pile of Stuff” and “Giving-Up Ghazal with Eyes.” Poems. Poet Lore 116, Winter/Spring 2022.


Martinez, Chloe. “You Finally Go Back to LACMA to See Band” and “Repatriation: Lakshmi-Narayana.” Poems. MORIA 10, December 5 2022.

Velji, Jamel. “Consuming Difference: Coffee and the Specter of the Islamic Other.Religious Othering, edited by Mark Juergensmeyer, Kathleen Moore, and Dominic Sachsenmaier. Routledge, 2022, pp. 52-62.

Abstract: This chapter turns toward the historical background of the way that Islam has been characterized – and caricatured in Europe. To do this, the author focuses on coffee, including the historical references by Europeans to coffee and its Arab origins. The author takes a close look at the symbol for a Viennese coffee that celebrates the conquering of the Ottoman army at the gates of Vienna in 1683 along with the arrival of the Arab-based popular drink and the coffeehouses that purvey it. The essay shows that the seemingly innocent icon of a Moorish boy became the symbol not only for coffee but also for the domination of non-Muslim Christian culture in Europe. Such symbols support the attitude of othering that continues in Austria and elsewhere in Europe in the contemporary era.


Velji, Jamel. “Making Authority from Apocalypse: Three Cases from Classical Islam.” Buddhist Violence and Religious Authority: A Tribute to the Work of Michael Jerryson, edited by Margo Kitts and Mark Juergensmeyer. Equinox Press, 2022, pp. 145-156.


*2023 Publications and Grants

Gastón Espinosa, "Nones, No Religious Preference, No Religion and the Misclassification of Latino Religious Identity," Religions 14 (March 2023): 1-21.


Gastón Espinosa, “The Vexed Man: Oliver Cromwell and the English Reformation on Silver Screen,” in Gastón  Espinosa, Erik Redling, and Jason Stevens, eds., Protestants on Screen: Religion, Politics, and Aesthetics in Hollywood and European Films (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 108-125, 361-362.


Gastón Espinosa and Jason Stevens, “’Holy Ghost Power’ in Robert Duvall’s The Apostle,” with Jason Stevens in Gastón Espinosa, Erik Redling, and  Jason Stevens, eds., Protestants on Screen: Religion, Politics and Aesthetics in Hollywood and European Films (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 202-218, 372-374.


Gastón Espinosa, Erik Redling, and Jason Stevens, “Introduction to Protestants and Film,” with Jason Stevens in Gastón Espinosa, Erik Redling, and Jason Stevens, eds., Protestants on Screen: Religion, Politics and Aesthetics in Hollywood and European Films (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 2023), 1-53, 345-354.


Gastón Espinosa, Erik Redling, and Jason Stevens, eds., Protestants on Screen: Religion, Politics and Aesthetics in Hollywood and European Films (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 404 pages.

Chung-Kim, Esther. Economics of Faith: Reforming Poor Relief in Early Modern Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, April 2021). Paperback released July 2023.


Chung-Kim Esther. “Legislation and Poor Relief: Bugenhagen and the Reformation in Braunschweig,” in Charity and Poor Relief across Christian Europe, 1400-1800, eds. J. Bradley and T. Fehler (Manchester University Press, 2023), 85-107.