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"With the grant from the Center for Western Civilization, Thought and Policy, I spent the beginning of the summer studying the German language for reading knowledge.  This was my first foray into the German language and I found it fascinating.  Having learned, in an academic sense, that English is a Germanic language, I found it fascinating to see the connections between these two languages.  However, I was more curious about its connections to Sanskrit.  Sanskrit is a language I have studied throughout my graduate school experience and, in doing so, I’ve always been struck by a curious fact: a great many of the early European scholars of Sanskrit were German.  In studying the German language, I was struck by how the two languages, so distant in time and culture, shared so many structural similarities.  This, combined with German’s unique phonetics—sounds that seem born deep within the speaker—gave the language an ancient and organic feel.  And yet, this language does so much modern and contemporary work in the world!  It really did feel, to me, to be a living connection between a distant past and a familiar present. 

Professionally, my work in Religious Studies sits in between Eastern and Western ways of thinking, examining religious philosophy born out of the European and American contexts and that born out of the East Asian.  Being particularly interested in the German thinkers of the Reformation, this class has served as an introduction to a deeper study of the works of these thinkers—works of which I will now have a deeper understanding.  My thanks to the CWCTP and I look forward to the fruits of this study continuing to blossom for years to come." -

--Greg Mileski
MA student, Department of Religious Studies
Summer 2017 Grant Recipient

See where CWCTP Student Grants can take you: Apply by February 1.