Liz Bucar

Liz Bucar is a third-year Ph.D. student in Ethics in the Divinity School

Liz grew up (basically) in Durham, New Hampshire, and earned her B.A. from Harvard University in 1996, with a major in Government. She received her M.A. from the Divinity School in 2001.

I wanted to pursue a graduate degree at the Divinity School because of its unique combination of both ministry and academic degree students. Particularly for someone like myself who is interested in constructive comparative work, the combination of faculty and students with both research and pastoral concerns is invaluable. I chose the University of Chicago because its faculty has such a wide range and depth of scholarship (which is fortunate since I have changed my research interests, as well as my advisors, since I've been here). It was useful as well to complete my master's degree here. Since I did not have an undergraduate degree in religion, the required three-course master's sequence my first year helped me understand the sorts of questions asked by a range of scholars in the field, and to begin to locate myself within specific sub-fields.

In general I have found the Div School an immensely supportive place. Grants for summer language and conference travel are available, in addition to a number of funds for student-run groups and conferences.

While my main reasons for coming to the Div School were the reputation of its faculty and its rigorous program, I have stayed and continued to enjoy my time here because of my fellow students. Those who are further along in the program have acted as mentors and sounding boards at various points, including some periods of anxiety. My student colleagues have been wiling to participate in informal reading groups, conduct qualifying exam preparations together, read drafts of dissertation proposals, among other things-all of which have been crucial to the development of my own ideas.

I know for a fact from graduate student friends in other programs that it is not the norm to have a working environment where you would feel comfortable asking a fellow student to read a draft of an essay, a grant proposal, etc. I have found students very generous with their time as well as their intellectual insights. I know University of Chicago students have a bit of a reputation, to put it mildly. But I haven't felt any sort of competitiveness from my fellow students in my four years here. In fact, I think camaraderie develops from sharing this rather intense experience of graduate work. It's great to be able to stop by the student lounge any time of day and find a classmate.

My coursework was completed last spring, and I really enjoyed the range of classes I took at the Div School; some of the best were small seminar formats. It is also great for someone with my sorts of diverging interests to have the entire University of Chicago course catalogue at my disposal. I've taken classes on everything from Islamic civilization to Foucauldian theories of power in other departments.

My area of study is ethics, which is part of constructive studies (along with theology and philosophy of religions). I am interested in comparative ethics (Catholic and Islamic), and in particular issues of gender and sexuality. My dissertation will explore the issue of gendered personhood through the writings of a religious leader from the Roman Catholic Church and from Shiite Islam: Pope John Paull II and Ayatollah Khomeini, respectively. I organize my research on how the category of a gendered person as conveyed through the rhetoric of these two exemplars, focusing on how their strategies of persuasion allow or disallow certain practices, in order to uncover a space for productive feminist ethical thinking.

The Div School is the ideal environment for my sort of project. The ethics area has very strong faculty, some of whom share aspects of my interest in comparative ethics, Catholic moral theology, feminist philosophy, and practical theology. In addition, I draw on resources from other areas of study here, especially methodologies of the History of Religions. I have found the Div School very flexible and supportive of my work, which occurs between pre-defined areas of religious studies.