Recent Dissertations

Students have successfully defended dissertations that demonstrate specialized knowledge as well as the interdisciplinary potential of the program.  

Recent dissertations:

• Amanda Henderson, "Progressive Paradox in Political Rhetoric: The Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965"
• Madison Tarleton, "Material Culture in the Mediterranean: An Exploration & Examination of Anti-Judaic and Antisemitic Spanish Medieval Material Art Objects in Culture"
• Michael Laminack, "Encounter-Oriented Subjectivity in Levinas and Barth: Conditioned Freedom in Resistance to Ethnonationalism"
• Rudy Reyes, "Divergence: Toward a Neurodivergent Latinx Liberative Social Ethic"
• Brandon Tsark, "Reevaluating the God-Human Relationship through the Psychological Origin of Sin: A Comparative Theology of Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard on the Doctrine of Sin"
• Felicia George, "The Struggle is Real: Constructing Liberative Meaning Making that Facilitates Black Students’ Authentic Identity Formation and Navigation Through PWI’s"
• Padraic Fitzgerald, "'Til Valhall': The Formation of Nordic Neopagan Identity, Religiosity, and Community at a Norwegian Heavy Metal Festival"
• Shubham Sapkota, "Seeing the Unseen: Bridging Realities of Experience through Dependent Origination"
• Kathleen Douglass, "Being and Trauma:  A Theory of Listening as a Dis/Appropriation of the Listener to the Call of the Unspeakable in Trauma"
• Shyamaa Creaven, "A Sense of Trust: Somatic Spiritual Practices as a Path to Wholeness in Spiritually"
• Ryan Hall, " "Maybe Jesus Was Suicidal Too": A Qualitative Inquiry Into Religion and Spirituality in Suicide Attempts"
• Kristian Diaz, "Transnational Religious Pluralism and Identity Formation: Oscar Romero and Salvadoran Diaspora After the Civil War"
• Tom Ryan, "Repeating Repetition: Reconstructing a Lacanian Subjectivity through Kierkegaardian Repetition"
• Rode Molla, "Reframing Hegemonic and Fragmented Identities through Subjective In-betweenness"
• Teresa Crist, "Decolonizing Interfaith Interaction: Common Humanity and Colonial Legacies"
• Sarah Neeley, "Criminalized Houseless Women, Jesus, and the Praxis of Kinship: An Outsider’s Liberative Ethic"
• Rebecca Chabot, "Mia San Mia: Professional Club Soccer, Religion, and Social Ethics"
• Joshua Smith, "Luke Was Not a Christian: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Jewish Authorship of Luke and Acts"
• David Pettit, "Turning the Tempest for God’s Forgotten: Psalm 42 as Synecdochic Lead of the Elohistic Psalter"
• Marc Coulter, "Spiritual Care of Gay Men in Committed Relationships: An Evidenced-Based Intercultural Approach"
• Joshua Lawrence, "The Martyr’s Desire: Levinas, Girard, and Infinite Responsibility" 
• Stewart Gabel, "The Role of Dehumanization in the Nazi Era in Activating the Death Drive Resulting in Genocide"
• Seth Walker, "Righteous Remixes, Sacred Mashups: Rethinking Authority, Authenticity, and Originality in the Study of Religion"
• Meghan Aelabouni, "Out of Time: Temporal Performativity and Resistance in Popular American Film, Television, and Theater"
• April Woodson, "'Dialogical Offense': A Postcolonial Womanist Deconstruction of the Colonial Experience of the African American Female through U.S. Institutional Apparatus known as Criminal Justice Policy"
• Albert McClure, "Immortal Combat: Iconoclasm and the Hebrew Bible"
• Shawn Fawson, "Sustaining Lamentation in Traumatic Grief through the Contemporary Elegy: A Practical Theology of the Poetics of Testimony"
• Heidi Rhodes, "Affect and Critique: Negative Dialectics and Massumi’s Politics of Affect"
• Tracy Temple, "Exploring the Lived Religious Experiences of Gay and Lesbian Ordained Clergy in the United Methodist Church"
• Tom Barlow, "The Movement of the Spirit: A Constructive Comparison of Divine Grace in the Theologies of Paul Tillich and John Wesley"
• Rob Heaton, "From 'Most Useful Book' to Scriptura Non Grata: Canon, Ecclesiastical Constrictiveness, and the Loss of the Shepherd of Hermas in Early Christianity"
• Jennifer McCurdy, "Behind the Mask of Morality, (e)urochristian Bioethics and the Colonial-Racial Discourse"
• John Schachterle, "Exercising Obedience, John Cassian and the Creation of Monastic Subjectivity"
• Nestor Gómez-Morales, "En El Poder del Espiritu, a Qualitative Research Study on Social Ethics and Theology among US Latina Latino Pentecostals"
• David King, "Reclaiming the Radical Economic Message of Luke"
• Norton Herbst, "A History of Nondenominational Churches in Denver and Beyond, 1945–2000"
• Ben Sanders, "'Traditioning' Blackness: A Theo-Ethical Analysis of Black Identity in Black Theological Discourse"