William Connolly, “Process Philosophy and Planetary Politics”
William Connolly is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Poiitcal Science at Johns Hopkins University.
Clayton Crockett, "Non-Theology and Political Ecology: Post-Secularism, Repetition, and Insurrection" Abstract>
Clayton Crockett is Associate Professor and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Central Arkansas. He is the co-author, with Jeffrey W. Robbins, of Religion, Politics and the Earth: The New Materialism, and the author of Radical Political Theology: Religion and Politics After Liberalism, and most recently, Deleuze Beyond Badiou: Ontology, Multiplicity and Event.
Gary Dorrien is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University. An Episcopal priest and lifelong athlete, he was previously the Parfet Distinguished Professor at Kalamazoo College, where he taught for 18 years and also served as Dean of Stetson Chapel and Director of the Liberal Arts Colloquium. Prof. Dorrien is the author of 14 books and approximately 250 articles that range across the fields of ethics, social theory, theology, philosophy, politics, and history.
Paulina Ochoa Espejo, "Between a Rock and an Empty Place: Political Theology and Democratic Legitimacy" Abstract>
Paulina Ochoa Espejois Assistant Professor in the department of Political Science at Yale University. She specializes in contemporary political theory and the history of political thought. She received a PhD from Johns Hopkins University, an MA in Political Theory from the University of Essex and a Licenciatura in International Relations from El Colegio de México. Before joining the faculty at Yale, she held a Carey Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Erasmus Institute in the University of Notre Dame. She has been a visiting professor at CIDE, in Mexico City. She is the author of The Time of Popular Sovereignty: Process and the Democratic State (Penn State University Press; 2011). Her articles have appeared in The Journal of Politics, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, Metapolitica, and Nexos.
Jacqueline M. Hidalgo, "'The River at Its Source Sang': Imagining Ecology in Aztlán and the New Jerusalem " Abstract>
Jacqueline M. Hidalgo is Assistant Professor of Latina/o Studies and Religion at Williams College. She holds a Ph.D. in Religion from Claremont Graduate University, an M.A. in New Testament from Union Theological Seminary in New York, and an A.B. in Religion from Columbia University. A student of scriptures as projects of human communal imagination and negotiation, her research focuses on U.S. Latina/o engagements of scriptures in particular in order to better understand the relationships of power that surround textual encounters. Her current book project, _Scriptures and (No) Place: Aztlán, the New Jerusalem, and Utopian Imaginations of California_, examines scriptural landscaping in and about California in order to better understand how scriptures both authorize and contest claims on time and space.
Melanie Johnson-Debaufre, “The Basileia of God and the Space/s of Utopian Politics”
Melanie Johnson-Debaufre is Associate Professor of New Testament & Early Christianity at Drew Theological School. Her work extends beyond the classroom and library, into churches, popular media, and community groups and architectural sites in Turkey. Through her research, teaching, and speaking, she explores how the study of early Christianity and its context in the Roman Empire provides insight into contemporary debates about the Bible, religion, sexuaity, and globalization.
Vincent Lloyd, "From the Theopaternal to the Theopolitical: On James Baldwin and Barack Obama" Abstract>
Vincent Lloyd is Assistant Professor of Religion at Syracuse University and Visiting Fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. His research focuses on the intersection of religion, race, and political theory. Among his publications are The Problem with Grace: Reconfiguring Political Theology (Stanford UP, 2011) and an edited collection, Race and Political Theology (Stanford UP, 2012). He is currently co-editing The Racial Saint: Marked Flesh, Holy Flesh, and he is finishing a book manuscript on natural law in African American political thought.
Elias Ortega-Aponte, “Democratic Futures In the Shadow of Mass- Incarceration: Towards A Political Theology of Prison Abolition”
Elias Ortega-Aponte is Assistant Professor of Afro-Latina/o Religions and Cultural Studies at Drew Theological School.
Joerg Rieger, "Contesting the Common Good and Religion in the Context of Capitalism: Abrahamic Alternatives" Abstract>
Joerg Rieger is Wendland-Cook Professor of Constructive Theology at Perkins School of Theology, SMU. For more than two decades he has worked to bring together theology and the struggles for justice and liberation that mark our age. His work addresses the relation of theology to public life, using tools from cultural studies, critical theory, and religious studies, and reflecting on the misuse of power in politics and economics. Internationally recognized for his prolific and visionary writing, a selection of his books includes Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude (2012, with Kwok Pui Lan), Traveling (2011), Grace under Pressure (2011), Globalization and Theology (2010), No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future (2009), Beyond the Spirit of Empire: Theology and Politics in a New Key (2009, with Néstor Miguez and Jung Mo Sung, Portuguese transl.), Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times (2007, German and Portuguese transl.); God and the Excluded: Visions and Blindspots in Contemporary Theology (2001); and Remember the Poor: The Challenge to Theology in the Twenty-First Century (1998, Portuguese transl.).
Nathan Schneider, Public Lecture: "Crazy Eyes: Notes from Occupy Wall Street's May Day Apocalypse" Abstract>
Nathan Schneider has written about the Occupy movement for publications including Harper's Magazine, The Nation, and The New York Times, as well as in a forthcoming book from University of California Press. He earned his BA in religious studies from Brown and an MA in the same from University of California, Santa Barbara. He has been an editor at several online outlets including the Social Science Research Council's The Immanent Frame, Religion Dispatches, Killing the Buddha, and, currently, Waging Nonviolence. His first book, God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet, will be available in June, also from University of California Press.
Kathryn Tanner, "The Ambiguities of Transcendence" Abstract>
Kathryn Tanner is Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale University. Her research relates the history of Christian thought to contemporary issues of theological concern using social, cultural, and feminist theory. She is the author of God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment? (Blackwell, 1988); The Politics of God: Christian Theologies and Social Justice (Fortress, 1992); Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Fortress, 1997); Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology (Fortress, 2001); Economy of Grace (Fortress, 2005); Christ the Key (Cambridge, 2010); and scores of scholarly articles and chapters in books that include The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, which she edited with John Webster and Iain Torrance.
John Thatamanil, “The Invention of ‘The Religious’ and ‘The Political’: Genealogy of Religion, Interfaith Dialogue, and Political Theory” Abstract>
John Thatamanil is Associate Professor of Theology and World Religions at Union Theological Seminary. He has taught a wide variety of courses in the areas of comparative theology, theologies of religious pluralism, Hindu-Christian dialogue, Buddhist-Christian dialogue, the theology of Paul Tillich, process theology, and Eastern Orthodox theology and spirituality. Tying together these diverse interests is a basic commitment to a deeply metaphysical form of philosophical theology which he takes to be essential for any Christian theology that seeks to be in conversation with non-Christian religious traditions. Professor Thatamanil seeks to revive in his work a commitment to speculative reflection as found in the work of Paul Tillich and Alfred North Whitehead. Specifically, he is on the hunt for a viable "process Tillichianism."
Nimi Wariboko, "Elements of Tradition, Protest and New Creation in Monetary Systems:
A Political Theology of Market Miracles" Abstract>Nimi Wariboko is the Katherine B. Stuart Professor of Christian Ethics at Andover Newton Theological School. He previously taught at New York University and at the Frank G. Zarb School of Business, Hofstra University (New York). His work focuses on economic ethics, metaethical theories, pentecostal theology, and African studies.
Sharon Betcher is a free lance academic, living on Whidbey Island, Washington, and Affiliate Professor of Theology, Research and Teaching Fellow, at Vancouver School of Theology (Vancouver, BC). She is the author of two academic manuscripts, Spirit and the Politics of Disablement (Fortress, 2007) and Spirit and Cosmopolis: Theology for Seculars (Fordham, forthcoming 2013) as well as essays on ecological, postcolonial and disabilities theologies within multiple anthologies. Over the past several years, she has been exploring the diverse genres within creative nonfiction and recently won first place in the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts’ 100 Word Story Smash with her composition, “Blackberry Memorial” and in the Whidbey Island Writer’s Association 2012 1200 word memoir competition with her composition “Facing Diminishment.”
Peter G. Heltzel is Associate Professor of Theology and Director of the Micah Institute at New York Theological Seminary. He is the author of Jesus and Justice: Evangelicals, Race and American Politics (Yale University Press). His edited volumes include The Chalice Introduction to Theology (Chalice Press), Evangelicals and Empire (Brazos Press) with Bruce Ellis Benson, and Theology in Global Context (T&T Clark Press) with Amos Yong. In addition to writing for Books & Culture, Science & Theology News, and Sojourners, he has published numerous articles in journals, such as Political Theology, Princeton Theological Review and the Scottish Journal of Theology.
W. Anne Joh is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Joh’s areas of research interests include postcoloniality, gender, affect, war, militarism and trauma, political theory and race, economies of freedom, rights and debt, theorizing melancholia and loss, Asian America and Asia Pacific, and theorizing politics of love. Her contributed essays include “Teaching to Learn from the Other,” “Postcolonialism in Fugue: Contrapuntality of Asian American Experience,” “Loves’ Multiplicity: Jeong and Spivak’s Notes Toward Planetary Love,” “Interrogating Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in Feminist Theology,” “Gender and Sexuality in Asian American/Pacific Islander (API) Religious and Theological Studies,” “Violence and Asian American Experience: From Abjection to Jeong,” “Relating to Household Labor Justly.” She has also written Heart of the Cross: A Postcolonial Christology. Forthcoming are Terror, Trauma and Hope: A Spectrality of the Cross and co-edited volume, Engaging the United States as a Military Empire: Critical Studies of Christianity from Asian/Asian North American Perspectives.
Catherine Keller is Professor of Constructive Theology at the Theological School of Drew University. In her teaching, lecturing and writing, she develops the relational potential of a theology of becoming. Her books reconfigure ancient symbols of divinity for the sake of a planetary conviviality—a life together, across vast webs of difference. Thriving in the interplay of ecological and gender politics, of process cosmology, poststructuralist philosophy and religious pluralism, her work is both deconstructive and constructive in strategy. She is currently finishing Cloud of the Impossible: Theological Entanglements, which explores the relation of mystical unknowing, material indeterminacy and ontological interdependence.
Hyo-Dong Lee is Assistant Professor of Theological Philosophy at Drew Theological School. Professor Lee’s research and teaching interests lie in comparative theology and comparative philosophy of religion, with a focus on the dialogue between the Christian/Western theological and philosophical tradition on the one hand and Northeast Asian philosophical and religious thought, including Confucianism, Daoism, Donghak, etc., on the other. His interests extend also to postcolonial theories and European postmodern thought.
Otto Maduro is a philosopher and sociologist of religion. Married to the writer and scholar Nancy Noguera, both are parents to Mateo (b. 1995). Otto has an M.A. in Philosophy of Religion (1973), another in Sociology of Religion (1975), and a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion (1977) from the Catholic University of Louvain, all magna cum laude. Involved in the Latin American Liberation Theology movement since its inception, he has published, in over 20 countries and seven languages, close to 200 essays and five books -- and edited three other books -- on themes of religion, knowledge, and liberation. His latest book is Mapas para la fiesta: Reflexiones latinoamericanas sobre la crisis y el conocimiento (La Paz, Bolivia: Verbo Divino, 2008). Since 1992 he is Professor of World Christianity at Drew University Theological School. He directed a study of U.S. Latina/o immigrant Pentecostal churches in Newark (NJ) with grants from the Ford Foundation and the ATS/Henry Luce Fellows in Theology Program (1999, 2006). He was elected in 2006 National Director of the Hispanic Summer Program, and in 2011 President of the American Academy of Religion. He received the Virgilio Elizondo Award from ACHTUS (the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the U.S.) in 2012.
Dan Miller is Assistant Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Landmark College. He researches in the areas of religion, secularism, and political theory; contemporary Continental philosophy; and political theology. He is currently completing his first book, The Secular in Question: Politics, Religion, Democracy.
Cynthia Moe-Lobeda is Seattle University’s Wismer Professor of Gender and Diversity Studies. She is on the faculty of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Environmental Studies Program, and graduate School of Theology and Ministry. Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda has lectured or consulted in Africa, Asia, Europe, and many parts of North America in theology and ethics. She has served as Director of the Washington, D.C. office of Augsburg College's Center for Global Education; and as a health worker in Honduras. Moe-Lobeda is author of Healing a Broken World: Globalization and God (Fortress, 2002), Public Church: For the Life of the World (Fortress, 2004), Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation (Fortress, 2013), and numerous articles and chapters. She is co-author of Saint Francis and the Foolishness of God (Orbis, 1993) and Say to this Mountain: Mark's Story of Discipleship (Orbis, 1996), and The Bible and Ethics: A New Conversation (Fortress, forthcoming 2013).
Johannes Morsink is Professor of Political Science at Drew University. Following his undergraduate education at Calvin College and Seminary, Professor Morsink received advanced degrees from the University of Wisconsin, and then began his career at Drew in 1972 in the Department of Philosophy. His publications on Aristotle’s biology stem from these early years. Always having had political philosophy as his first love, in 1992 he moved over to Drew’s department of political science, where he teaches courses in the history of political thought, in political theory and in jurisprudence and human rights. He does research in the area of human rights and has published articles on that subject in the Human Rights Quarterly. One critic praised his recently published book, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Origins Drafting and Intent (University of Pennsylvania Press) as “the definitive work on the drafting of the twentieth century’s most important human rights document.” In March of 2000, the book was selected to receive the Certificate of Merit for Technical Craftsmanship by The American Society of International Law.
Mayra Rivera is Associate Professor of Theology at Harvard Divinity School. She is author of Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God (2007) and co-editor, with Stephen Moore, of Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology (2010) and, with Catherine Keller and Michael Nausner, of Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (2004). She is currently writing a book the significance of body and flesh in contemporary theology and theory.
Jeffrey W. Robbins is Professor of Religion & Department Chair of Religion & Philosophy at Lebanon Valley College. His area of specialization is in continental philosophy of religion. His teaching interests include contemporary religious thought, world religions, Christianity, Islam, and religion and politics. In addition to teaching courses in religion, he also is the director of the American Studies program and the college colloquium.
Santiago Slabodsky is Assistant Professor of Ethics of Globalization at Claremont School of Theology. He is an Argentinean scholar trained in Jewish, Liberationist and Decolonial philosophies. He researches global ethics and the intersection between Jewish and Postcolonial social theories, especially in Latin America, the Caribbean and the Maghreb.
Debi Hall-Dean: "An Hour on Route 78: Bridging Environmental and Economic Landscapes Through Partnership"
Debi Hall-Dean is the Executive Director of the St. John’s Community Center, a not-for-profit faith and community based service organization in Newark. Through partnerships with over 40 organizations of like-minded people in and outside of the city, Partners in Acts (Assisting our Community Through Service), the outreach arm of the center, seeks to be a positive presence and resource for the community through the principle of “one hand washing another.”
Rev. Fletcher Harper: "Divest and Reinvest – Climate Change Campaigns for Campuses and Faith Groups"
Rev. Fletcher Harper is an Episcopal priest and the Executive Director of GreenFaith. He preaches, teaches, and speaks weekly at houses of worship from a wide range of denominations in New Jersey and beyond about the moral and spiritual basis for environmental stewardship and justice.
Darnell L. Moore: "Standing in the Intersection: An Interactive Conversation on Race, Sexuality, Activism, and Religiosity"
Darnell L. Moore is a writer, educator, and activist whose work on Black Christian thought is informed by anti-racist, feminist, queer of color, and anti-colonial thought and advocacy. Darnell's essays, social commentary, poetry, and interviews have appeared in various scholarly journals and national and international media venues, including the Feminist Wire, Ebony.com, The Root.com, Gawker, Arts & Understanding, PrettyQueer.com, Mondoweiss, NewBlackMan (In Exile), Social Text: Emergences and The Huffington Post. He was appointed by Mayor Cory Booker as Inaugural Chair of the city of Newark, NJ LGBT Concerns Advisory Commission, the first of its kind in the state of New Jersey. He is the co-chair, with Beryl Satter, of the groundbreaking Queer Newark Oral History project--an archival project that seeks to chronicle the multifaceted lives of LGBTQ Newarkers and their allies.
George Schmidt: "Taking Place: Squatting and Organizing with and As the Homeless"
George Schmidt studied black liberation theology at Union Theological
Seminary under James Cone. He is currently an STM student at UTS
working on the theological dimensions of corporate personhood.
Throughout his life he has worked with various organizations that have
developed radical strategies to combat and survive homelessness and
poverty.Nathan Schneider: "How Religious Studies Can Take Over the World"
Nathan Schneider has written about the Occupy movement for publications including Harper's Magazine, The Nation, and The New York Times, as well as in a forthcoming book from University of California Press. He earned his BA in religious studies from Brown and an MA in the same from University of California, Santa Barbara. He has been an editor at several online outlets including the Social Science Research Council's The Immanent Frame, Religion Dispatches, Killing the Buddha, and, currently, Waging Nonviolence. His first book, God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet, will be available in June, also from University of California Press.
Michael Sniffen: "From the Pulpit to the Streets: Empowering God's People for Social and Economic Justice"
The Rev. Michael Sniffen is an Episcopal Priest, activist and organizer in Brooklyn, NY. He has been engaged in the Occupy movement since September 2011. The Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew, which he serves as Rector, is the hub of Occupy Sandy - a grassroots disaster response movement that has trained over 60,000 volunteers. The movement has received national and international attention for its effectiveness and horizontal organizing principals. Sniffen graduated from Drew's M.Div program in 2005 and is currently a GDR doctoral candidate in the area Liturgical Studies/Homiletics.
Joe Strife, "Taking Place: Squatting and Organizing with and As the Homeless"
Joe Strife is a PhD candidate at Union Theological Seminary under Gary
Dorrien. His interests are mainly directed toward understanding the
dynamics between faith-based organizations and politics. Joe has
spent most of his life community organizing around the issues of
housing, homelessness, and economic rights.
Leena Waite: "An Hour on Route 78: Bridging Environmental and Economic Landscapes Through Partnership"
Leena Waite is the Director of Volunteer Management and Educational Programming of America’s Grow-a-Row, and a Drew alum with a Master’s of Arts in Ministry. The mission of AGAR is to positively impact as many lives as possible through a volunteer effort of planting, picking, rescuing, and delivering free fresh produce to food pantries, soup kitchens, crisis centers, and food banks all over the state of New Jersey. AGAR now partners with the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers to set up Free Farm Markets in the food deserts of the Camden area, as well as with Team Walker Org. in Jersey City and Partners in ACTS, in Newark
An Yountae, Drew University
"Dialectic of Labor and the Death of God: Immanent Exteriority in Hegel, Negri, and Dussel"Karen Bray, Drew University
"The Common Good of the Flesh: A Methodology of the Obscene in the Work of William Connolly and Jeorg Rieger"Elijah Prewitt-Davis, Drew University
"Chick-fil-A Recognize(s) Me!: The Politics of Recognition After God"Shelley Dennis, Drew University
RespondentElizabeth Freese, Drew University
RespondentP. Joshua Griffin, University of Washington
"The Event’s Becoming: Imminent Ecotheology in an Age of Planetary Liminality"Hannah Hofheinz, Harvard Divinity School
RespondentCharon Hribar, Drew University
"Common Sense/Good Sense: Rethinking the 'Common Good' and the Myth of the Middle in U.S. Society"Anatoli Ignatov, Johns Hopkins University
“The Earth is like a Skin:” Earth Priests, Sacred Groves and African Eco-Theologies"Beatrice Marovich, Drew University
"Spectral Creatures and the Figure of Justice"Dhawn Martin, Drew University
"A Cosmopolitan Political Theology: Engaging 'The Political' as Incarnational Field of Emergence"Michael Oliver, Drew University
"Commonly Good Sacrifice: Kenosis as a Theological Intervention for Environmental Politics"A. Paige Rawson, Drew University
"A (Socioeconomic) Hermeneutics of Chayim: The Theo-Ethical Implications of Reading with Wisdom"Sara Rosenau, Drew University
"Re-considering the Communitarian Argument in Political Theology"
