Education
Ph.D. Harvard University, 2020. Committee on the Study of Religion
M.Div. Harvard Divinity School, 2012. Christianity
B.A. The University of Chicago, June 2009. International Studies
Dissertation abstract: John Calvin’s 1559 Institutio Christianae Religionis, perhaps the most influential single text to emerge from Europe’s sixteenth-century religious reformations, was composed in a period of acute uncertainty in early modern visual culture. This thesis reinterprets the text’s famously puzzling visual themes against this backdrop. It demonstrates that both the Institutio’s content and its distinctive form are designed to intervene in and re-form its readers’ habits of visual perception.
Publication
“‘In the flesh a mirror of spiritual blessings’: Calvin’s defense of the Lord’s Supper as a visual accommodation,” Quid est sacramentum?: On the Visual Representation of Sacred Mysteries in Early Modern Europe and the Americas, 1500-1700. Walter Melion, ed. Leiden: Brill, 2019.
Grants and Awards
2020: Visiting Fellow in Religion, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
2019: Merit Fellowship, Harvard University, awarded based on departmental rankings of promising graduate research
2019: Resident Fellow, Center for Media, Religion and Culture, University of Colorado Boulder
2018: Visiting Fellow, Center for Media, Religion and Culture, University of Colorado Boulder
2018: Research and Residence Grant, Early Modern Conversions Project, McGill University
2017: Distinction in Teaching Award, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University
2014: Doctoral Fellowship, Science, Religion, and Culture Program, Harvard Divinity School
2009: Travel Grant, Luce Foundation, to represent Harvard Divinity School at the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia
Papers Presented
“Rethinking ‘matter’ through Calvin's account of divine accommodation,” presented at Renaissance Society of America, March 2019, Toronto, Canada.
“The Augustinian self as spectator,” presented at American Academy of Religion Annual Conference, November 2018, Denver, CO.
“Affect and public spectacle in late antiquity and the Reformation,” presented at Center for Media, Religion and Culture Seminar, University of Colorado Boulder, October 2018.
“Calvin’s hall of mirrors,” presented at Metaphysics of Conversion Seminar, McGill University, August 2018, Montréal, Canada.
“‘In the flesh a mirror of spiritual blessings’: Calvin’s account of the Supper as an accommodation under threat,” presented at Lovis Corinth Colloquium, Emory University, November 2017, Atlanta, GA.
“Clandestine religious identities and visual culture in early modern Europe,” presented at Reformation Dialogue and Identity Workshop, Harvard Divinity School, September 2017, Cambridge, MA.
“Origen’s temporal hermeneutic,” presented at North American Patristics Society Annual Conference, May 2017, Chicago, IL.
“Calvin’s ‘faith’ as a special mode of temporal perception,” presented at Ways of Knowing: Graduate Conference on Religion, October 2016, Cambridge, MA.
“The idea of ‘skills’ for interfaith dialogue: a critique,” presented at Educating Religious Leaders for a Multi-Religious World Seminar, Parliament of the World’s Religions, December 2009, Melbourne, Australia.
Teaching Experience
2019 – Present: Lecturer, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, CO
World Religions
Religious Narratives
2018: Instructor, Regis University, Denver, CO
Religion and the Human Quest
2017 – 2018: Instructor, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Senior Thesis Advising: ‘Post-secular’ Historical Fiction
Tutorial: Reading Theology in the Sixteenth Century
2015 – 2017: Teaching Fellow, Harvard University and Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA
The Ancient Greek Hero
God and Modern Writing
Early Christian Thought 2 – The Latin Tradition
Early Christian Thought 1 – The Greek Tradition
Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion
References
Charles M. Stang
Professor of Early Christian Thought, Harvard Divinity School
Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions
cstang@hds.harvard.edu
Mark D. Jordan
Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Christian Thought, Harvard Divinity School
Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University
mjordan@hds.harvard.edu
Lee Palmer Wandel
Warf Michael Baxandall and Linda and Stanley Sher Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
lpwandel@wisc.edu