Class Biographies

Course Professors

Professor Randall Balmer

Randall Balmer, the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of American Religion at Barnard College, has taught at Columbia for nineteen years. The author of ten books, he has also written and hosted three documentaries for PBS and was nominated for an Emmy Award. He is editor-at-large for Christianity Today magazine, and his commentaries on American religion, distributed by the New York Times News Service, have appeared in newspapers across the country. His op-ed pieces have been published in the Des Moines Register, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, New York Newsday, the San Diego Times-Union, the Nation and the New York Times. He may be reached at rb281@columbia.edu

Professor June Cross

This is Professor June Cross' first year teaching the Religion Course. She is a documentary filmmaker who, in 2003, completed a six-hour mini-series for public television called "This Far by Faith", a history of the African-American religious experience. Professor Cross herself is a practicing Buddhist; her faith journey led her out of the daily news grind and into documentary film, where she has worked for the last fourteen years. Before joining the Columbia faculty, she worked for Frontline, CBS News, and PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. She may be reached at jc1339@columbia.edu

Students

Erika Dyson

Beat: Latter-Day Saints
Erika Dyson is a cranky Yankee from New England. She is working toward her PhD in North American Religious History at Columbia. Her research focuses on some of the nineteenth century religious movements that attempted to present themselves as both science and religion, such as the Spiritualists and Theosophists. Before beginning her undergraduate education at Mount Holyoke College in 1994, she worked for ten years as a costumer in the theater in Boston, New York, London and Japan. Her favorite gig was designing costumes for the off-Broadway review "Forbidden Broadway," which she did for six years. She may be reached at ewd18@columbia.edu .

Chris Karmiol

Beat: Hinduism
Chris Karmiol was born and raised in New York City. He graduated from Columbia in 2000 with a degree in writing and literature. Karmiol was a staff writer at The Windsor-Heights Herald (Hightstown, NJ) and The Princeton Packet, and is now a freelancer for the Trenton Times and other publications. His Columbia master's project is a 28-minute radio story about religion's role in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. His Web site is located at www.chriskarmiol.com. He may be reached at cdk14@columbia.edu.

Anne Lilburn

Beat: Buddhism
Anne Lilburn graduated from Colgate University in 1999 and spent 2000 serving in Americorps. She worked as a grant writer, an environmental organizer and an office temp, but never as a journalist, before coming to journalism school. She may be reached at acl2102@columbia.edu

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Liz Maziarz

Beat: Islam
Liz "Z-dog" Maziarz is a Jersey girl born and raised. She spent almost nine years doing fundraising and compliance work in the viper pit of New Jersey politics before fleeing to the mountains of Colorado in 2002. Liz is currently doing time on the East Coast in the interest of beginning her new career as a gonzo journalist. She is a mystic, a poet, and a quilter. She yearns to learn how to play the fiddle. She may be reached at emaziarz@aol.com.

Lisa Merlini

Beat: Baptist
Lisa Merlini is currently a graduate student at Columbia University's School of Journalism, where she is concentrating on religion writing and narrative non-fiction. Lisa has spent the previous year working on an independent documentary project about the creation of a sculptural memorial for the victims of 9/11. Prior to that, she studied narrative non-fiction writing at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine, where she also served as Publication Intern for the Institute's magazine, Salt. She has worked as Assistant Editor for the Magazine of La Cucina Italiana, and ran an emergency food pantry in Spokane, Washington. She earned her Bachelor degree in anthropology at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She may be reached at lm2171@columbia.edu.

Jennifer Ferreira Neeley

Beat: Catholicism
Jennifer Ferreira Neeley is a two-time regional Emmy nominee. She worked at ABC-TV's San Francisco bureau for three years leading to her graduate studies at Columbia. At ABC, she was senior producer and online journalist. Prior to that, she was a pioneer in Internet news, translating television newscasts into an interactive format. She was also a freelance correspondent for the Associated Press in Turkmenistan; a reporter, producer and executive producer for the CBS affiliate in Fresno, California; an intern for CNN's San Francisco bureau; and college radio personality in Berkeley and Davis, California and Lund, Sweden, where she was an exchange student. An LBJ Congressional Intern, she is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the American Conservatory Theater. She is also an accomplished singer, actor and performer. She may be reached at jdn2101@columbia.edu.

Geoffrey Orens

Beat: Orthodox
Geoffrey Orens was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to attending Columbia he wrote for Current Biography magazine for four years. He edited the book, "The Muslim World" in 2003. His master's thesis is on moderate Muslims in the United States and the pressure they feel from extremists and non-Muslims. He is a dervish in the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi community based in New York City. In his spare time he wrote, directed and edited three short films. He may be reached at gao2101@columbia.edu.

Deborah Pardo

Beat: Judaism
Deborah Pardo was born in Montreal, Canada, and lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, for seven years. She earned a master's degree in Jewish Studies from McGill University focusing on the history of Bible interpretation. She began a Ph.D. in religious studies, but decided instead to pursue a long-held dream of becoming a journalist. She worked for 10 years as a librarian at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal and was one of the editors of the Undergraduate Journal of Jewish Studies at McGill. Her goal is to become a religion writer after she completes her degree at Columbia. She may be reached at dep2103@columbia.edu.

Gloria Margarita Rodríguez

Beat: Judaism
Gloria Margarita Rodríguez is from Cathedral City, Calif. She graduated from the University of Southern California in 2003 with degrees in political science and journalism. She has served reporting internships at The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and at her hometown newspaper and television station, The Desert Sun and KESQ-TV. At U.S.C., Rodríguez was an assistant sports editor for the Daily Trojan, where she covered the football team and wrote a weekly column. She was also a reporter for Annenberg TV News and an associate producer and reporter for the campus Spanish television newscast, Los Angeles Al Descubierto. She may be reached at gmr2102@columbia.edu.

Jennifer Thome

Beat: Evangelical Christianity
Jennifer Thome is currently an intern for NY1's Inside City Hall and a broadcast concentrator at Columbia Journalism School. Before attending Columbia she was Vice President of a boutique Investment Banking recruiting firm in New York City and an wholesale electricity analyst in Baltimore, Maryland. Jennifer has traveled throughout Southeast Asia, Europe, China, Peru and Egypt. She graduate from Cornell University with a degree in Psychology. She may be reached at jbt2102@columbia.edu.

Cassandra Uretz

Beat: Islam
Cassandra Uretz studied classical percussion at the Manhattan School of Music, and received an MA in English from Columbia in 1996. She has written and copyedited for the Morris County Daily Record, the East Coast Web sites for American Movie Classics and the Independent Film Channel, Sotheby's, Thirteen-WNET, the Independent Film & Video Monthly, and (very briefly) the Wall Street Journal. She will intern this summer at the Overseas Press Club. After graduating, she hopes to write about cultural globalization and human rights.

Emily Winsett

Beat: Episcopal & Anglican
Emily Winsett graduated from Bates College in 2001 with a degree in English. While in college she interned for Modern Bride and for Inc. After graduation she worked as a media analyst for LexisNexis. She's taking the J-school day by day - just trying to make it to May.

Also In This Course

Alexandra Alter

Alexandra Alter is a teaching assistant on this course. She may be reached at ama58@columbia.edu.

Important Class Contributors

Donald Barnes

Hello, I am the bus driver Donald. I was born in Charleston, S.C., but I grew up as a Mountain boy in the western part of North Carolina. I have been driving busses for 4 years. Before that, I drove an 18 wheeler for about 2 years, delivering medical supplies. I am 25 and enjoy jazz, movies and driving all over the country meeting new people. And wouldn't ya know it -- I even get people who wanna get naked on the bus (going to the nudist camps in Florida) -- but I can keep 'em in line! He may be reached at dbarnes122301@aol.com.