Ohio Northern University

Faculty Member, Philosophy and Religion

Associate Professor

Getty College of Arts and Sciences

About

I am in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Ohio Northern University, in Ada, Ohio, USA.  I completed my dissertation in Modern Religious Thought at the University of Iowa in 2005. As someone trained in philosophical theology and the history of Christian thought, both my teaching and research are grounded in the study of historical sources as well as contemporary critical voices. My theological and philosophical work draws deeply from philosophical hermeneutics--particularly Paul Ricoeur--and philosophical theology, including the work of Paul Tillich and several contemporary phenomenologists.  At the same time, my work resonates with earlier figures from Bonaventure and Anselm to Schleiermacher and Hegel.

Currently I am working in three areas of research.  A large portion of my work centers on the issue of place in environmental thought.  My past work identifies place (and even more, our emplacement, to echo Ricoeur's view of emplotment) as a helpful point of orientation for environmental theology and philosophy.  To understand place in this way is to approach nature hermeneutically.  Because of the temporal dimensions of place, I have recently begun working on the issue of memory, imagination, and place.  This research fits well into the recent interest in environmental hermeneutics (or, to use a similar term used in the literature, ecological hermeneutics). 

A second area of research is the interconnection of theology, hermeneutics, and culture. This includes not only the visual arts, literature, and classical music, but also popular culture--television, film, etc.  Works of art and literature provide us with dialogue partners for understanding the richness and depth of human experience.  Not only does this engage environmental aesthetics and ethics, but it allows us to contribute to theological discussions of the meaning of being human.  Theological thinking oftentimes is thinking alongside works of culture, even in the cases that are on the surface identified with the more-than-human world.

While these two questions might appear separate, I am intrigued at the points of connection.  In both cases, the question is this: philosophically, what is our relationship with the world in which we live?  In the case of spiritual communities, we can further ask: how has religion exposed the depth of such a relationship?  Such questions are not simply intellectually interesting, but have real significance for the public sphere.  Thus I hope my scholarship and teaching clarifies these issues, and leads to a more ethical way of being in the world.

In addition to my work in environmental thought, I have begun to do work in a third area: the scholarship of teaching and learning.  Much of this work has been centered on civic engagement.  I served as co-director of a two year project, funded by the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Religion and Theology, on "Pedagogies of Civic Engagement."  A edited book will come out of this project.  I have also begun a project on teaching upper level religion classes to non-majors; this will result in one or more articles on the topic.

Contact Information