UA Professor Travels to Tibet and India on Fellowship

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Dr. Kurtis Schaeffer, an assistant professor of Asian religious studies at The University of Alabama and a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, recently was chosen as one of 15 recipients in the inaugural national competition for the Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship.

Schaeffer was awarded $75,833 for one year of study, and he will use these funds during 2003. Schaeffer’s research will center on the relationships among religion, medicine and textual scholarship in pre-modern Tibet. He will travel to various universities in the Northeast as well as to Tibet, Nepal and India for primary research. This research will be used for Schaeffer’s second book.

“Although only in his second year as a tenure-track professor here at UA, Professor Schaeffer has already demonstrated that he has a growing national reputation,” said Dr. Russell McCutcheon, chair of the department of religious studies within UA’s College of Arts and Sciences. “This year alone Harvard, Princeton, the University of Virginia and UCLA have invited him to give talks on their campuses. His first book is already out, his second is in the works, and proposals for two more are not far behind. His Ryskamp Fellowship is therefore well deserved.”

The Ryskamp Fellowship is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in honor of Charles A. Ryskamp, and is administered by the American Council of Learned Societies. Awarding peer-reviewed fellowships is at the core of the ACLS activity. The fellowship supports assistant professors in the humanities and related social sciences whose scholarly contributions have advanced their fields and who have well designed and carefully developed plans for new research.

The program is open to tenure-track assistant professors who have successfully completed their institution’s review for reappointment — or the equivalent — but have not yet been reviewed for tenure. Applicants must be employed at U.S. institutions and must remain employed for the duration of the fellowship. The awards seek to provide the time and resources these faculty members need to conduct their research under optimal conditions, free of administrative and teaching responsibilities.

Schaeffer earned his doctorate in Tibetan and South Asian religions from Harvard University in 2000 and holds additional degrees from the University of Washington, The Evergreen State College and Lewis and Clark College. He began teaching in the religious studies department at UA in August 2000.