Nominees for the Board 2010
Nominees for President
01 Bradford Hinze
Born in Rockford, Illinois, one of Virginia and Al’s five children, I attended Catholic primary and secondary schools and received my B.A. in philosophy at The College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. My M.A. in theology is from Catholic University of America, where I met Christine Firer in a class taught by Charlie Curran; it was the assigned reading of Gutierrez’s A Theology of Liberation that provided the impetus for our becoming close friends and more. Subsequently married, we taught at a Catholic high school in Detroit for several years and then pursued doctoral studies at The University of Chicago. Paul, our first son, was born near the end of our time in Chicago and Karl arrived at the beginning of our first year of college teaching. I taught for 19 years at Marquette University and for the last 5 years at Fordham University.
In 1990 I delivered my first paper at The College Theology Society, which was published in Horizons; my 1997 convention paper on ethnic and racial diversity appeared in the 1998 annual volume. Since then I have participated in many sessions in various capacities. In 1999 I was nominated for the board of the CTS, but was defeated. I was chosen by the board to select the keynote speakers at the annual convention in 2002 and edit the annual volume in 2003.
I have also served as a board member of the Catholic Theological Society of America and for six years I was the president of the International Network for Catholic Theology (INSeCT). I played a part in the CTS becoming a member of INSeCT.
Since 2000 I have collaborated with theologians in Germany and Austria on communicative theology, a practice-based community process approach to theology, developed by Jochen Hilberath and Matthias Scharer, and in the U.S. with Mary Ann Hinsdale, I.H.M, and more recently at Fordham with Tom Beaudoin.
Service to the Society
Throughout its history the College Theology Society has championed the highest standards of scholarship and pedagogy and nurtured the kind of companionship among theologians that is conducive to both. Practices of hospitality have been a distinguishing achievement of CTS, with every new generation of theologians invited to join the Society as they hone their craft and explore the theological frontiers. Let me address how I might promote this legacy if selected president.
In the area of scholarship, I would honor the charism and accomplishment of the CTS by continuing to promote the close collaboration of graduate students, new teachers, and seasoned veterans in the tried-and-true cycle of paper presentation, generous and honest feedback by peers and proven scholars that leads to judicious revisions and submission for publication. I would dedicate myself to reaching out to those involved in diverse graduate programs in theology and invite students and faculty to join us so that the research that shapes their programs can be enriched by discussions with students and faculty members representing alternative orientations and methods. In this way, the debates that go on between schools of theology can become conversations that go on within our Society so as to expand horizons, sharpen arguments, and forge new friendships. The frontiers of theology are increasingly global, intercultural, interreligious, and interdisciplinary, and consequently it is important that all of these facets of theology today find a welcome space in the Society.
In the area of pedagogy the CTS has since its founding stood for the conviction that quality theology and effective pedagogy go hand in hand. At every convention we must commit ourselves to making room to discuss theological pedagogy, and I would hope, give greater attention to the use of service-learning in our cities and global outreach to Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Finally, the CTS is well positioned to play a special role in helping doctoral students as they get ready for job searches and new teachers as they prepare tenure applications. We need to explore how we might help our members in these areas.
02 Alice Laffey
I have been a member of CTS for the past 28 years. I have served on the Awards Committee and as its Chair, as a convener of the Scripture Section, and as a consulter for the Executive Board. I participated in the pre-meeting teaching workshops and have published several articles in the Society’s Proceedings. I am also a member of CBA, CTSA, and SBL.
Since completing my dissertation in Scripture in Rome, I have taught at College of the Holy Cross and, during the summers, at other schools. Hired at Holy Cross to teach “Introduction to the Old Testament,” and “any third course in which I could interest students,” my intellectual interests and my teaching have included “Women and/in the Bible,” feminist/liberationist biblical hermeneutics, and ecological concerns from biblical and theological perspectives. I am interested in multidisciplinary learning, the intersection of religion and science, and the education of “the whole person.” Last year I taught the first semester of a year-long seminar on the environment. In the first semester I taught “Stewardship and Sustainability;” in the second semester the same students took “Energy for the Global Citizen” taught by a physics professor. This year, a biologist is teaching “Human Health and Dis-ease” in the first semester and I am teaching an adapted form of “Stewardship and Sustainability” during the second semester. I’m not certain that what I have said here is a “biography,” properly speaking, but I have tried to give you a sense of where my passion lies.
Service to the Society
What service could I provide to the Society? Over the years I have read many statements by nominees for offices of the CTS that speak of supporting graduate students and younger scholars, working to attract new members, working with the executive director to secure the best possible sites for our meetings, working to keep prices down out of sensitivity to those members whose affiliation does not provide sufficient support, and similar goals. I would gladly work to accomplish these goals as fully as possible.
One other thing I might like to do is to investigate some stories. The Bible is filled with very useful stories! What have been the personal and intellectual journeys of some of our members, younger and older? With respect to the seasoned among us, have their assumptions changed--as human beings, as teachers, as scholars? Where now is their passion? Has it changed and if, so, how and why? Is there anything we can learn from each other’s trajectories and wisdom? And with respect to our newer members, what are their hopes and fears, their assumptions and aspirations, their projects? What is it, when all is said and done, that excites their passion? Often these stories are shared after the banquet, helped along by a little wine and song. I would like to retain that openness and warmth while also finding a venue that would guarantee that we don’t miss out on the stories of the quieter ones.
Nominees for Vice President
01Bill Collinge
A native of Erie, PA, I received my bachelor’s degree from Georgetown in 1969 and my doctorate from Yale in 1974 in philosophy. I taught in the philosophy department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles from 1974 until shortly after being awarded tenure in 1980. Since the fall of 1980 I have been at Mount St. Mary’s University (formerly College) in Emmitsburg, MD, where I now hold the Knott Professorship in Theology and a joint appointment to the philosophy department. Primarily my professional activity has been teaching, but I have scholarly publications in three main areas—Augustine, John S. Dunne’s theology, and Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement—and I am the author of a general reference work on Catholicism. My books are St. Augustine: Four Anti-Pelagian Writings, in the Fathers of the Church series (co-authored with John A. Mourant; Catholic University Press, 1992); Historical Dictionary of Catholicism (Scarecrow, 1997, published in a second edition as The A to Z of Catholicism [2001]), with a third edition in progress); and, as editor, Faith in Public Life, the 2007 CTS Annual Volume. From 1991 to 2002, I served as national Secretary of Theta Alpha Kappa, the national honor society in Theology and Religious Studies. Since 1996 I have been Chair of the Adams County Heritage Festival, an annual multicultural festival of the arts, held in Gettysburg, PA.
Service to the SocietyFirst, I can offer long experience with the CTS. I have missed only two Annual Conventions since I joined in 1980. I have served the society as board member (1988-91), Baltimore-Washington regional chair (1987-90), convener of the Psychology and Religion section (2003-06), nominating committee member, Annual Volume editor (2007), manuscript reviewer for Horizons and the Annual Volume, and reviewer of Sandy Yocum’s CTS history.
Second, I have acquaintance with a broad range of the subdisciplines of our field (as you can probably tell from the above) and of the theology and religious studies departments throughout the country (at the peak of my Theta Alpha Kappa years, if you gave me your institution name, I could probably have recited its ZIP code).
Third, I am committed to both the diversity and the conviviality of the CTS. I mean not only ethnic but also theological diversity. As a friend of people on both sides of most of the issues that currently divide the world of Catholic theology, I hope the CTS can be a forum for respectful discussion of issues on which people are all too willing to read their opponents out of the church or out of the academy. At the same time, I will endeavor to preserve the community feeling, the Gemütlichkeit, that distinguishes the CTS from most other professional societies with which I am acquainted. That I am a survivor of the very first CTS post-banquet party, at Cabrini in 1983, may afford me some standing on the subject.
02 Anita Houck
Anita Houck teaches at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana, where she is Associate Professor and chair in the Religious Studies Department and co-director of the College’s writing program. A graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School and Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Anita is a former parish pastoral associate, Director of Religious Education, and high-school English and Religion teacher. She joined the CTS in 2001, has been a member of the Nominations Committee, and is currently a member of the Welcome Committee and a co-convener of the Spirituality Section. Since 2001 she has been Secretary and Treasurer of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, where she founded the Emerging Scholars group to support graduate students, recent graduates, and pre-tenure faculty. Her research interests include theology of laughter, spirituality of single life and vocation, and pedagogy.
Service to the SocietyLike many CTS members, I joined the Society when I was just beginning my career as a college teacher and I’ve stayed active in the CTS—and recommended it so often—because of its wonderful collegiality. Its meetings show year after year how well excellent scholarship, good humor, and warm hospitality complement each other. I’d be glad to work to foster CTS’s traditions of supporting graduate students and recent graduates, encouraging well-disciplined interdisciplinary research in theology and religious studies, and nurturing effective teaching. I’d also be eager to strengthen other areas of our mission, particularly our commitment to “work in an ecumenical spirit,” as the CTS’s Constitution puts it (and as our much-valued collaboration with the NABPR demonstrates). As the Society considers ways to broaden its outreach, I share that commitment to continuing to expand beyond our roots in Roman Catholic theology. In addition, I’m committed to the Society’s efforts to welcome new members and to encourage interactions—both at our meetings and through our website—between those new to the academy and those who have already survived some of the challenges of an academic career. Remembering my first CTS meetings, walking around with a tray feeling a bit as if I were still in high school, I was glad to be involved in last year’s efforts to welcome new attendees, am happy to be part of the new Welcome Committee, and look forward to working to enhance our longstanding tradition of hospitality.
Nominees for Treasurer
01 Brian Flanagan
Brian P. Flanagan is Assistant Professor of Theology at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. He completed his PhD in 2007 at Boston College, writing a dissertation entitled “Communion, Diversity, and Salvation: The Contribution of Jean-Marie Tillard, O.P., to Systematic Ecclesiology,” under the direction of Mary Ann Hinsdale, I.H.M.
At Marymount University, he teaches an introduction to Christian theology, as well as courses in ecclesiology, Christology, and other topics. Before coming to Marymount, he taught for two years at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
More recently, he has published an article entitled “Communion Ecclesiology and Ecumenical Experience: Resources for Inner-Denominational Otherness,” in the collected volume Ecumenical Ecclesiology, edited by Gesa Thiessen, and is currently revising his dissertation manuscript for publication in 2012. His research interests include ecclesiology and ecclesiologies of communion in particular, ecumenism, liturgical and sacramental theology, and 19th and 20th century Catholic history.
Flanagan has been a member of the College Theology Society since 2002, and has given papers twice in the Theology of the Church section. He has also been actively involved in ecumenical dialogue, serving on the Committee on Christian Unity of the Massachusetts Council of Churches and the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue Committee of New England. He is a lay Paulist Associate and was an active member and leader in the Paulist Center Community in Boston, MassachusettsService to the Society
I gave my first theological presentation ever at the meeting of the College Theology Society in 2002, and have been a member ever since. There are two characteristics of our Society I experienced at that and subsequent meetings that I most value and would work to sustain if elected as Treasurer and as a member of the Board of Directors.
The first is the warm spirit of collegiality that pervades the CTS. The Society’s openness to younger scholars, its continuing community of more senior scholars, and its approach to paper sessions and plenaries as opportunities to learn from and to support each other’s research all are hallmarks of the CTS. We are a group of scholars able to do serious theology, while not taking ourselves too seriously. The second strength of our Society is our firm commitment to teaching in conversation with theological research. The example of colleagues asking not only about the content of our research, but about “how it would teach,” helped prepare me for my own vocation as a teacher-scholar.
I would bring to the Board the honesty and attention to detail necessary for this role. My research and experience have confirmed for me the fundamental importance of opening spaces for community among all of us in our otherness to each other, and I would work to advance the Society’s tradition of openness to our sometimes cacophonous, sometimes harmonious, voices. If elected, I would be honored and humbled to serve the College Theology Society as Treasurer.
Nominees for Positions on the Board
01 Mark Allman
Mark has been a member of the CTS since 1999. He presented papers and/or served on panels at the annual meetings in 2000, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Last year there was a panel on his book Who Would Jesus Kill? War, Peace and the Christian Tradition (Anselm Academic, 2007), which also won the 2008 CTS book of the Year award. His essay, co-authored with Tobias Winright, “Jus Post Bellum: Extending the Just War Theory” was published in the 2007 CTS Annual Volume, Faith in Public Life. Together Allman and Winright have written After the Smoke Clears: The Just War Tradition and Post War Justice (Orbis, due out in 2010) and are currently writing an introduction to Christian ethics (Anselm Academic). Allman is also editing a volume of collected essays marking the silver anniversary of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ economic pastoral letter Economic Justice for All (Anselm Academic). He recently was awarded tenure at Merrimack College (North Andover, MA) where he teaches social ethics and serves as a Faculty Associate in the Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations. He has a Ph.D. (Christian Ethics) from Loyola University of Chicago and a M.A. (Theology) from The Catholic University of America. He and his wife, Emily, spend their free time playing Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders with their two children Ezekiel (age 5) and Agnes (age 3).
Service to the Society
I would like to give back to the CTS because it has given so much to me, both personally and professionally. My first paper presentation at a professional academic society was at the CTS meeting in 2000. I was extremely nervous, but found the collegiality and support of the CTS community to be most encouraging. Years later, my first book was the subject of a panel and then later that day selected as the book of the year, which again have helped me both personally and professionally. I call the CTS a community because it is not like other academic organizations. It is supportive, encouraging, jovial, rarely adversarial and always willing to nurture young theologians. This is what CTS has done for me, it has helped me mature as a theological ethicists. By serving on the board I would like to ensure the CTS stays true to these roots by: 1) encouraging those early in their careers by making sure there is space at our meetings for them to present papers and serve on panels, and 2) maintaining a focus on pedagogical development by offering workshops on teaching and finding ways to share teaching resources and ideas, not only at the annual meeting, but throughout the year. In particular, I see the new web page and an excellent resource for collegiality and professional development.
02 Mary Kate Birge
Mary Kate Birge, SSJ, associate professor of theology, has taught Scripture and theology to undergraduates at Mount St. Mary’s University, Emmitsburg, MD since January of 2001. Before she began her doctoral studies at The Catholic University of America (PhD in Biblical Studies, 2001), she taught high school for 16 years (Latin, Spanish, Religion) in various, Massachusetts high schools, public and parochial. In addition to her degree from CUA, she holds degrees from the College of Our Lady of the Elms (BA in Spanish/Latin), Tufts University (MA in Classical Studies), and St. John’s University (Collegeville, MA in Theology). A member of the CTS since 2002, she has served as co-convener of the CTS Scripture Section for the last three years, and co-convener of the CBA’s Pauline Theology Task Force for five years. Her book, The Language of Belonging: the Rhetorical Analysis of Kinship Language in First Corinthians, was published in 2004 by Peeters, Leuven. She is also co-authoring with a colleague a textbook, tentatively entitled Genesis and Creation, to be published by Anselm Academic in 2011.
Service to the SocietyI was very happy to say yes to having my name included on the election slate for the CTS Board. I would like very much to give something back to the Society and its members from whom I have received so much in terms of professional development and support, collegiality, and friendship over these past nine years. I offer my skills in organization, analysis, and dialogue as well my ability to negotiate differences with good humor. I am strongly committed to the development of scholar-teachers in theology and religious studies and have a passionate commitment to justice inside and outside of our profession. If I can serve the College Theology Society through being on its Board or in any other way, I would be very pleased and honored to do so.
03 Colleen Carpenter Cullinan
In the spring of my senior year in college, a friend convinced me to trek up to Harvard Div to take a graduate class “just for fun”--20th Century Roman Catholic Theology, with Francis Fiorenza. I was an English major and had never taken a course in theology or religion--and Dr. Fiorenza’s class blew my world open. I still have all the books from that course--Schillebeeckx’s Jesus, Rahner’s Foundations, and Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza’s In Memory of Her among them--and it is because of that course that I decided to pursue graduate study in theology.
I now teach systematics at St. Catherine University (formerly the College of St. Catherine) in St. Paul, Minnesota. I graduated from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2001, and spent several years as an independent scholar in rural western Minnesota before coming to St. Kate’s. Living in a farming community for seven years introduced me to sustainable agriculture as a theological issue, and also taught me a lot about the intersections between faith, art, and landscape (something I have been pursuing in my research, especially with respect to Canadian painter Emily Carr). I joined CTS as a graduate student in 1996, and recently completed a term as convener of Contemporary Theologies. I have served as the treasurer of the Women’s Seminar in Constructive Theology at CTSA since 2004, and co-convened the Seminar in 2006-7. My current research focuses on ecology, beauty, and the sacramental imagination.
Service to the Society
One of the things I appreciate most about CTS meetings is the fact that quite often a lively discussion about someone’s research segues seamlessly into a discussion about the ways that that research might make an appearance in our classrooms. The Society’s explicit interest in pedagogy and the members’ deep commitment to teaching combine to make CTS meetings remarkable--and wonderfully fruitful. I look forward to finding ways to support more explicit opportunities for us to share our pedagogical adventures with one another.
Another important issue for me is ecumenism: I very much appreciate the Society’s commitment to both its Roman Catholic roots and its ecumenical partnerships and outreach. While St. Kate’s is a proudly Catholic college, fewer than half my students are Catholic. St. Kate’s students include Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians--and also Muslim Somali immigrants; Hmong students who practice a traditional shamanistic religion; and a sizeable number of students who are simply alienated from any religious practice. Accordingly, the relationship between Catholicism and other churches and faiths is of great interest to me (and my students!), and I have found CTS to be a particularly valuable place to pursue this.
Finally, in the past few years CTS has challenged its members to be more attentive to the ways that race and ethnicity impact our scholarship and our teaching; again, this is an issue that I see every day at St. Kate’s and would like to pursue more formally in partnership with other interested members of the Society.
04 John Malesic
Born and raised outside of Buffalo, N.Y., I earned a B.A. with a double major in religion and physics from the Catholic University of America and then enrolled in the graduate program in Theology, Ethics, and Culture at the University of Virginia. My first job after earning my Ph.D. was as a parking lot attendant. Since 2005 I have been Assistant Professor of Theology at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. I teach in many areas of King’s curriculum, team-teaching with colleagues in English and history and collaborating with biologists in a learning community on the theme “humans and nature.” Otherwise, I teach extensively in the core curriculum, most often courses on belief and unbelief, Christology, and religious selfhood. I have served on the Curriculum and Teaching Committee and am currently co-chair of the Catholic Identity and Mission Committee at King’s. My published work draws from the Christian tradition (broadly considered) to address problems arising from Christianity’s contact with modern secular culture. Two of my articles investigate Kierkegaard’s response to key secular thinkers in his time. My first book, Secret Faith in the Public Square: An Argument for the Concealment of Christian Identity (Brazos, 2009), draws from Cyril of Jerusalem, Kierkegaard, and Bonhoeffer to argue that the best way for American Christians to halt the exploitation of Christian identity for gain in the public arenas of politics, the workplace, and the marketplace will be to keep that identity a secret in public, revealing it only within the bounds of the church.
Service to the Society
As a relatively new member of the CTS (having joined in 2006), I believe that the most valuable thing I can bring to the Society’s Board is a fresh, broad perspective. The CTS membership is homogeneous in many ways, including in members’ academic training. Unlike most members, I am a Ph.D. graduate of a public university. Catholic theology is not my research specialty, and I do not think of myself as a systematic theologian in the classic sense. Yet in the few years I have been a member, I have participated in three annual conventions, placed one essay in the annual volume, and begun serving as convener of the Art, Literature, and Religion section. I also have a broad perspective on academic life and culture, expressed in my columns in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
I would like to see the CTS undertake a project aimed at improving the numbers of theology and religion majors and minors at Catholic colleges and universities. This could require surveys, studying best practices for recruiting majors and minors, and clarifying the value, academic goals, and transferrable skills associated with studying theology and religion. This project could be in the interests both of members teaching at liberal arts colleges and of members teaching at Ph.D.-granting universities. More theology majors at small colleges could generate more theology faculty positions, which means more jobs for theology Ph.D.s. This project could draw from or contribute to the AAR’s current inquiry into the Religion Major and Liberal Education.