From January to June 2025. Books, articles and chapters from faculty and students.
← Back to June 2025 Newsletter Contents
Books
Kevin O'Neill's latest book is Unforgivable: An Abusive Priest and the Church that Sent Him Abroad, published by the University of California Press, and the first to examine the systematic actions of the Catholic Church to cover up clerical sexual abuse by moving abusers across international borders. We asked Professor O'Neill about his academic and personal paths to this important new work, a conversation that also explored how research and writing can intersect in unexpected ways.
Walid Saleh's book, The Formation of the Classical Tafsir Tradition, originally published in 2004 and the first monograph length study of al-Thalabi (d. 1035) and his influence in the history of Qur’an commentary tradition, was released in paperback – attesting to the book's lasting value and interest.
May 2025 saw the publication of Alexander J.B. Hampton's book, The Metaphysics of Divine Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), which examines participatory metaphysics in the context of four systematic themes: creation, incarnation and salvation, being and multiplicity, and the human activities of naming, knowing and making. In doing so, the book explores participation in terms of its role in the development of Christianity’s self-articulation, and its implications for contemporary philosophical and theological considerations. This year he also authored the chapter "The Poetics of Nature: Human-Nature Dialogue in the Thought of Novalis’, in Living Ideas: Matter and Life in Coleridge, Schelling, and Other Dynamical Idealists. ed. Peter Cheney (London: Springer, 2025). He was guest editor of a special issue of Religions journal, "The Platonic Tradition, Nature Spirituality and the Environment," for which he authored the introduction and which also included the earlier pre-published article by DSR PhD candidate Katarina Pejovic, "Theurgy, Paredroi, and Embodied Power in Neoplatonism and Late Antique Celestial Hierarchies."
Are you nursing a broken heart? Curious about the meaning of your crush’s texts? Or perhaps you just want to tell someone you love them? PhD candidate Anusha Sudindra Rao co-authored How to Love in Sanskrit, a compendium of short, exquisite poems originally written by a wide range of Sanskrit scholars — ancient poets, monks, emperors and even some modern-day writers — and translated by Rao and her partner, Suhas Mahesh.
Articles & Chapters (alphabetical by author/lead)
PhD candidate Mohannad Abusarah's article, “The Evolution of Social Roles and Intellectual Orientations among Jerusalem’s Notables during the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” was published in Ostour, Issue 22, p.62-76.
Filip Andjelkovic’s chapter, “Playing with Oneself: The Space of Fantasy in Virtual Sex Simulators," was published in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sex and Sexuality in Game Studies.
PhD student Dustin Barker published his first article, “Determinism and moral agency in 4 Ezra,” in the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha.
Ken Derry co-authored the chapter “Film Studies” in The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Indigenous Religions, edited by Graham Harvey and Afe Adogame.
PhD candidate Stephanie Duclos-King's article, “Is the Medical Missionary Obsolete?: Survey of the Changing Landscape of Scholarship on Christian Mission in India,” was published in Religion Compass, Vol 19, Issue 5-6.
PhD candidate Christina Gousopoulos has had two articles published recently: "Matthew, Luke, and.. James? The Reconstruction of Q and the Epistle of James,” New Testament Studies 70.4 (2024): 425–34 and “And Then There Were (At Least) Three …: A Collective Crucifixion, the ‘Seditious Jesus Hypothesis’, and Writing Good Historiography” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 23(2):1–19 (2025).
Marsha Hewitt has published two pieces recently: the article “Extended Minds, Ethical Agents and Techno-subjectivity in the Worlds of AI",” appeared in the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) Council on Artificial Intelligence Report, Issue 4, May 2025, and in The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Jewish Studies (edited by Stephen Frosh and Devorah Baum), "Sigmund Freud: Figure of History, Memory, or Anti-Jewish Fantasy?"
PhD student Amy Jemmet's first article, “The E-Meter from a Child's Perspective,” was published in Nova Religio 28(4):61–82 (2025).
Pamela Klassen and alumna Judith Brunton (PhD, 2022, now assistant professor at Rice University) co-authored "Birthing", a chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Religion and American Culture, ed. Chad E. Seales. London: Routledge, pp. 430-449.
John Kloppenborg's article, “Were there religious associations in Antiquity?” was published in Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses 100 (3-4) 2024, 435-462.
Amira Mittermaier's article, “Religious Afterlives of a Revolution,” was published in Cultural Anthropology 40(1).
Sara Verskin’s article, “Midwives as advocates: Exploring women’s expert testimony in medieval North Africa,” appeared in the special issue of Body and Religion, “Islamic ethics embodied: premodern discourses of medicine, law, affect, and philosophy.”