Presenters

Karen Barad, University of California at Santa Cruz

Karen Barad is Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Barad's Ph.D. is in theoretical particle physics and quantum field theory. Barad held a tenured appointment in a physics department before moving into more interdisciplinary spaces. Barad is the author of Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Duke University Press, 2007) and numerous articles in the fields of physics, philosophy, science studies, poststructuralist theory, and feminist theory. Barad's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Hughes Foundation, the Irvine Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Barad is the Co-Director of the Science & Justice Graduate Training Program at UCSC

Jane Bennett, Johns Hopkins University

Jane Bennett
is Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, where she teaches political theory and American political thought. She is the author of Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Duke, 2010), The Enchantment of Modern Life (Princeton 2001), Thoreau's Nature (Rowman and Littlefield), and Unthinking Faith and Enlightenment (NYU).  She is a founding member of the journal Theory & Event, and the Editor of the journal Political Theory.

Lorillai Biernacki, University of Colorado Boulder


Loriliai Biernacki
(Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research interests include Hinduism, the interface between religion and science, and gender. Her first book, Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex and Speech in Tantra (Oxford, 2007) won the Kayden Award in 2008. She is co-editor of God’s Body: Panentheism across World Religions coming out with Oxford University Press in 2013. She is currently working on a study of the 11th century Indian philosopher Abhinavagupta that addresses notions of selfhood, body and cosmology. She is also currently working on the interstices between religion, science and panentheism.

Philip Clayton, Claremont School of Theology

Philip Clayton is Executive Vice President and Provost of Claremont Lincoln University, an interreligious university representing all the world’s major religious traditions. He received the PhD from Yale University and has taught at Williams College, the California State University, and Claremont School of Theology, as well as holding guest professorships at the University of Munich, the University of Cambridge, and Harvard University. Clayton specializes in constructive Christian theology, the religion-science debate, comparative theologies, and the philosophy of religion.

Clayton has been a leading advocate for interreligious dialogue, comparative theologies, and the internationalization of the science-religion dialogue. As Principal Investigator for the “Science and the Spiritual Quest” program and as Senior Advisor and judge for the “Global Perspectives in Science and Spirituality” program, both funded by the Templeton Foundation, he has been at the forefront of efforts to expand support for this field to Muslim and Jewish scholars, to the Dharma traditions of India, and to the religions of Southeast Asia. As a Christian theologian, Clayton has been deeply involved in the emerging church movement, speaking and writing about the evolving understanding of Christian faith in the 21st century and new ways of being and becoming church. His constructive work grows out of Jesus’ radical way of compassion and a kenotic Christology (Phil. 2).

Clayton has authored or edited some 22 books. Among his works are The Problem of God in Modern Thought; God and Contemporary Science; Explanation from Physics to Theology: An Essay in Rationality and Religion; Quantum Mechanics; Evolution and Ethics: Human Morality in Biological and Religious Perspective; Science and the Spiritual Quest; Religion and Science: The Basics; Transforming Christian Theology: For Church and Society; In Quest of Freedom: The Emergence of Spirit in the Natural World; and Adventures in the Spirit: God, World, Divine Action, and The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, Faith.


Catherine Keller, Drew University Theological School

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.

Elías Ortega-Aponte, Drew University Theological School

Elías Ortega-Aponte is an Afro-Latino scholar whose areas of expertise are cultural sociology, religious ethics, critical social theory, social movements, and bioethics.  He received his Ph.D. in Religious Social Ethics from Princeton Theological Seminary and now serves as Assistant Professor of Afro-Latinos/as Religions and Cultural Studies at Drew University Theological School in Madison, NJ. Dr. Ortega-Aponte approaches teaching from an  interdisciplinary perspective that is committed to social justice and to the celebration of the creativity, genius, and fighting spirit of communities of color. His primary research interest is the study of how the intersections of race, religion, and experiences of inequalities lead Afro-diasporic communities in the United States and abroad to find ways to engage the challenges of urban poverty, incarceration, access to education, and adequate health care.

Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Wesleyan University

Mary-Jane Rubenstein is Associate Professor and Chair of Religion at Wesleyan University. She is also core faculty in the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and co-director of the Certificate in Social Cultural, and Critical Theory. She is the author of Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe (Columbia, 2009) and Worlds without End: the Many Lives of the Multiverse (Columbia, 2014).


Manuel A. Vásquez, University of Florida

Manuel A. Vásquez received his B.S. from Georgetown University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Temple University. He has been an Andrew W. Mellon fellow at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Americas. His area of expertise is the intersection of religion, immigration, and globalization in the Americas. In particular, he has focused on contemporary transnational religious networks across the hemisphere, with increasing interest in the comparative study of transnational religious dynamics in the “Global South.” Vásquez’s empirical work is combined with interest in method and theory, particularly in regard to embodiment, material culture, practices, place-making, and mobility (physical and virtual).

Theodore Walker Jr., Southern Methodist University/Perkins School of Theology

Theodore Walker Jr. is Associate Professor of Ethics and Society at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is author of Empower the People: Social Ethics for the African-American Church (1991); and of Mothership Connections: A Black Atlantic Synthesis of Neoclassical Metaphysics and Black Theology (2004); and co-editor with Mihaly Toth (a Hungarian process philosopher) of Whiteheadian Ethics: Abstracts and Papers From the Ethics Section of the  Philosophy Group at the 6th International Whitehead Conference At the University of Salzburg, July 2006 (2008). He contributes to and serves on the International Advisory Board for the journal Process Studies; and he contributes to and serves as a guest editor for the Journal of Cosmology.

Carol Wayne White, Bucknell University

Carol Wayne White is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Bucknell University. Her publications include Poststructuralism, Feminism, and Religion: Triangulating Positions (2002), The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631-70): Reverberations from a Mystical Naturalism (2009), and multiple articles addressing the intersections of critical theory, process thought, and religion. Dr. White has just completed a book that explores expanded views of the human within the frameworks of postmodern science and religious naturalism, and is beginning a new one on the critical  intersections of deep ecology, religious naturalism, and nature poetry. She is increasingly interested in understanding the kinship and differences among various species that challenge outdated conceptions of distinctive human nature in the West.

Respondent Discussant

Whitney Bauman, Florida International University

Clayton Crockett, University of Central Arkansas

Clayton Crockett is Associate Professor and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of five books, including Religion, Politics and the Earth: The New Materialism, with Jeffrey W. Robbins; and most recently, Deleuze Beyond Badiou: Ontology, Multiplicity and Event. He is a co-editor of the book series "Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics and Culture" for Columbia University Press.

Robert Corrington, Drew University Theological School

Robert Corrington has spent the past several decades developing his own philosophical system of Ecstatic Naturalism, which continues to unfold in a series of books and articles. Early in his career he brought together the perspectives of Continental phenomenology and American pragmatism in order to benefit from the descriptive care given to lived experience by both traditions. Peirce and Heidegger were early interlocutors, later augmented with a deep appreciation for the work of Justus Buchler, whose own metaphysics represents a radical break with the various traditions of Western philosophy.

Allan Dawson

Brianne Donaldson, Claremont School of Theology
Brianne Donaldson, is a writer and professor of Indian and western metaphysics and ethics, with an emphasis on Jainism and process thought. Her work investigates worldviews capable of envisioning alternative ecological communities and eco-nomics that invite marginalized communities to the table, and that resist systems of violence toward animals and the environment. She is awaiting publication of her first book Creaturely Cosmologies: Why Metaphysics Matters for Animals and Planetary Liberation, as well as a forthcoming collection of essays: Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature: A Common World for Animals and the Environment.

Krista E. Hughes, Hanover College


Krista E. Hughes
is Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at Hanover College, where she teaches courses in contextual theologies, gender studies, and religious pluralism. Her work draws insights from process and feminist thought and critical theory to reimagine classic Christian themes for a postmodern milieu. She is author of several essays, including “Intimate Mysteries: A Sensible Apophatics of Love” in Apophatic Bodies: Infinity, Ethics, and Incarnation and most recently “Beauty Incarnate: A Claim for Postmodern Feminist Theology” in Anglo Saxonica. She is currently working on a book that explores questions of agency, gift, corporeality, and aesthetics in the movement of grace.
Luke Higgins

Dan Miller, Landmark College

Arthur Pressley, Drew University Theological School


Arthur Pressley's teaching and research center on cross-cultural studies focusing on culture and personality, pastoral care and counseling, and psychology of trauma and recovery.
Joshua Ramey, Haverford College


A native of Northern California, Joshua Ramey received his BA in Philosophy and English from Seattle Pacific University in 1998, and his PhD in Philosophy from Villanova University in 2006. From 2007-2010 he taught in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Rowan University, and has been teaching at Haverford College since 2010. Ramey has held positions as Visiting Asistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, the Writing Program, and the Program in Peace, Justice, and Human Rights. In 2011-2012, he served the Hurford Center for Arts and Humanities as Coordinator of Transdivisional Student/Faculty Initiatives. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science.
Mayra Rivera-Rivera, Harvard Divinity School


Mayra Rivera-Rivera
joined the HDS faculty in July 2010, having previously been Assistant Professor of Theology at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. Her transdisciplinary work in critical theological studies engages key Christian themes in relation to current theory and philosophy. Rivera Rivera's work also analyzes the role of religious ideas in Latina theory. Her book The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God (2007) explores the relationship between models of divine otherness and ideas about interhuman difference. She is also 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 that explores the connections between theological and philosophical metaphors of body and flesh.
Jeffrey W. Robbins, Lebanon Valley College


Jeffrey W. Robbins is Chair and Professor of Religion and Philosophy, and director of the American Studies program at Lebanon Valley College, where he has been named the Thomas Rhys Vickroy Teacher of the Year. He is the author or editor of six books, including most recently Religion, Politics and the Earth: The New Materialism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) with Clayton Crockett and Radical Democracy and Political Theology (Columbia University Press, 2011). He is a contributing editor of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, and co-editor of the Columbia University Press book series, "Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture."
Jenna Supp-Montgomerie, Quest University


Jenna Supp-Montgomerie's work focuses on the appearance of religious thinking and practices in everyday life, particularly as we adopt and negotiate technological change. She has published essays and book chapters on this theme, including "Planetary Subjects after the Death of Geography" in Planetary Loves: Gayatri Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology and "'If Only You Could See What I've Seen Through Your Eyes': Destabilized Spectatorship and Creation's Chaos in Blade Runner" inCrossCurrents. She is currently working on a book about how American Christianities have shaped American ideas about globalization. This study begins in 1858, when the Atlantic telegraph cable was first successfully strung across the ocean. At that moment, Americans declared the advent of a world unified by communication and marked by the ends of distance and war. This persistent rhetoric animated what it meant to be modern and American and today echoes in claims that the Internet creates a global village.
John J. Thatamanil, Union Theological Seminary

John J. Thatamanil 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."

 

 

 

 
   
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