January 27, 1996



Dr. James Goss
Department of Religious Studies,
CSUN

Dr. Goss,

I would very much like to be considered for any open positions or courses in your Religious Studies Department. I have been teaching courses in World Religions and in Asian Religions at Loyola Marymount University and at Mt. St. Mary's College for the past six years. Among my most cherished recent academic accomplishments, I have designed and teach two courses, Myth, Religion, and Culture as well as The Buddha and the Christ; both of which have been included in the catalogue at Mt. St. Mary's.

        My teaching philosophy is quite simple; it is simply a matter of turning my students into amateur historians of religions with all the requisite skills and critical methodologies which that lofty and noble vocation entails. Doing that requires some work. It involves making them aware of the history of interpretation and the contemporary hermeneutical options as well as the ambivalent, contradictory, and complementary paradigms that sift and shift through the multivalent religious traditions found in human culture. I pay special attention to gender issues, the role of women in religion, and the concerns of feminist hermeneutics in the interpretation of religion. I have had the opportunity to study and work with some excellent specialists in these areas and have guided many students into research projects dealing with such issues. By necessity and in virtue of my training, my courses are inter-disciplinary, aim for multi-cultural lucidity, and emphasize empathy and understanding of the other and cautiousness in interpretation of otherness (epoche). Since there is much that appears as exotic and esoteric to the uninitiated these courses serve as an initiation into the mysteries of the scientific study of religion as well as an invitation to self-scrutiny and personal quest. My ambition is to render sophisticated philosophical concepts accessible, to create an appreciation for the subtle, and to build an "ecosphere of the spirit" in the minds of my students that values the quest for transcendence, human identity, purpose, and meaning within the traditions of humanity. As I said, my teaching philosophy is quite simple, it's my work ethic that makes the demands.

My research philosophy is quite similar to my teaching philosophy and is probably best characterized by what my mentor, Kees Bolle, said when approving my dissertation proposal, "You simply have to read all the relevant literature." (I think he must have gleaned this concept from his mentor, Mircea Eliade.) My personal library card has for some time been among the most expensive of my habits (feasts, books, music, and bicycles form important links in my personal Great Chain of Being). As a former editor of a scholarly journal I have a keen appreciation for the well-expressed article and hope to see many more of mine in print. As well as in my own commitment to writing, I try to make the journal article a benchmark for my students while encouraging a wide diversity of topics for my/their research papers. I have often benefited from the creativity, industry, and insights of my budding young historians of religions. Naturally, I would love to be at CSUN where the reputation of the Religious Studies Department and its students holds the promise of some gifted research partners. Gifted students are second only to gifted colleagues in the research reservoirs of a scholar.

In addition and supplemental to my course preparation has been my Doctoral Dissertation, the major project of the decade. The dissertation, Access to Revelation and the Quest for Meaning, deals with models of revelation in the world's religions and their relevance within the contemporary hermeneutical horizon. In it I deal with such religious phenomena as shamanism, mysticism, prophecy, divination, oracles, inspiration, visions, ecstatic modes, meditation, dreams, mediumship, and spirit possession. I examine these phenomena in the context of and as they are expressed in ritual, ritual community, sacred communications (such as scripture and other sacred writings), traditions, myth, etc.; and, as transmitted by and encoded in symbols and creative hermeneutics. In looking at various patterns of transcendence and their implied ontologies, I focus on such issues as ethics, theodicy, teleology, anthropology, and cosmology and their consequent ramifications for human identity and purpose; the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. At the heart of my dissertation I examine the encounter of western and eastern paradigms of revelation and their contents in light of the Buddhist/Christian dialogue. Both traditions however, are viewed within the context of their origins and the encounters engendered by their transmissions. Thus, I look at Buddhism in its origins in India as well as in its encounter with the indigenous religions of China and Japan. As well, I look at Christianity as having emerged from encounter/competition with such deep traditions as Greek philosophy and Greco-Roman mystery cults and also as a contemporary sibling rival with Judaism and Islam. As complex and demanding as all this may seem, nothing is dearer to my heart than these types of considerations, so I am propelled not only by scholarly motivations but existential reasons as well...

As far as my abilities to intermesh with your existing faculty and program, that is something that is perhaps best determined like many religious phenomena: experientially. I hope the opportunities manifest. As an aside, it strikes me as a somewhat subtle twist-of-fate that after many sojourns and having resisted several opportunities which would have taken me out of Southern California, that an opportunity should arise at the institution from which I earned my degree in English and Comparative Literatures. It is, in a sense, like coming full circle.


Sincerely,

Randal Lee Cummings