News from Former Lilly Postdoctoral Fellows

This year has been an exciting and productive one for research, publications, awards, and hires among the former Postdoc Fellows.  

Susanna Childress (2008-2010), Visiting Assistant Professor in English, Hope College, reports that she published several poems in national literary journals, including The New South, The Minnesota Review, and Fugue. An interview with Childress by Lilly Graduate Fellow Kristin George Bagnadov was featured on The Colorado Review's online site; Susanna also has interviews on the blogs Poetry Matters and Antler. She served as coordinator of Lilly’s 2012 Arlin G. Meyer Prize in Imaginative Writing as well as the judge for the Making Literature Conference at Taylor University, the Lowell-Grabil awards at Wheaton College, and the Writers' Harvest Awards at Drake University, accompanied by readings or lectures at each of these schools and also at St. Francis University. Susanna and her husband, Josh Banner, released a full-length music album last fall entitled The Necessary Dark, whose songs are largely adaptations of her poems and short stories; the two of them comprise the band Ordinary Neighbors.

Lisa Deam (2001-2002), reports that in the past year she has continued writing creative non-fiction about art, literature and life. Two of her essays appeared in The Cresset:  “Road to Revelation: The Art of Caravaggio in Salley Vickers’s The Other Side of You”  (Trinity 2012) and “My Eyre Affair” (Lent 2013).  In addition, she has begun giving spiritual formation workshops using medieval world maps to shed light on our personal journeys with Christ. Lisa presented a workshop at Christ Church Lutheran in Minneapolis in October 2012 and will be leading more workshops at Faith Church Dyer this June and Covenant Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Ohio in September.

Franklin Harkins (2005-2007), Assistant Professor of Theology, Fordham University, announces that he has accepted a position as Reader in Medieval Theology at Durham University in England, and he and his family we will be spending the next year in Durham.

Paul Harvey (1993-1995), Professor of History, University of Colorado, reports that his co-authored book, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America,  was selected as one of the "5 Best Books in Religion" published in 2012 by Publisher's Weekly. In January, he gave presentations on the material in the book at the Newberry Library, the University of Illinois Chicago, Northwestern University, and Valparaiso University.

Matt Hedstrom (2005-2007), Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, the University of Virginia,  has informed us that his book, The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century  (Oxford University Press, 2013) was released earlier this year. 

Matthew Lundin, (2007-2009), Assistant Professor of History, Wheaton College, published his research on German diarist Hermann Weinsberg (1518-1597) as Paper Memory: A Sixteenth-Century Townsman Writes His World  (Harvard University Press, 2012). Matthew also wrote three review essays: a review of Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society, in Christian Scholar’s Review (Summer 2012); "The Reformation of the Artist," a review of Steven Ozment, The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation, in Books and Culture (July/August 2012): 27–28, and "Framing the Secular: A Review Essay" in The Cresset 75, no. 4 (Easter 2012): 53–58.

Piotr Malysz (2010-2011), Assistant Professor of History and Doctrine at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, announces that his first book, Trinity, Freedom, and Love: An Engagement with the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel,  was published by T&T Clark/Bloomsbury in the fall of 2012. Last summer Piotr gave a plenary addresses on "Freedom and Obedience in the Christian Life" at the North American Lutheran Church's annual conference in Minneapolis; the paper has since been published in the conference proceedings. Piotr has also translated some pieces from English into Polish and German into English, including an article by Oswald Bayer on the modern concept of freedom, which is forthcoming in the journal Pro Ecclesia. Finally, this summer Piotr will be walking the Way of St. James (Camino de Santiago) with some of his students and co-organizing a Young Lutheran Theologians' gathering in Pittsburgh.

Jennifer Miller (2010-2012), recently accepted a one-year full-time position as an instructor at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, MN. Jennifer had been teaching there and at the University of Minnesota since fall 2012. 

Caryn Riswold (2000-2002), Associate Professor of Religion and Chair of Gender and Women’s Studies at Illinois College, reports that recently, in Spring 2013, the Illinois College Board of Trustees voted to promote her to Professor of Religion.   In July 2012 she launched a blog, feminismxianity, with the Progressive Christian channel at Patheos.com.  She posts several times a week on issues at the intersection of religion, politics, social justice, and pop culture.  Caryn also contributes to RhRealityCheck and her local newspaper.  Much of this work is a result of my participation in the Faith and Reproductive Justice Leadership Institute at The Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. in 2012.  In 2012, a significant part of Caryn’s book Feminism and Christianity was reprinted in McGraw-Hill's textbook Women's Voices, Feminist Visions, which is used by many introductory gender and women's studies courses, including her own at Illinois College.  She also contributed a chapter, "Conversations and Intersections," in the newly published book Sex, Gender, and Christianity, edited by Priscilla Pope-Levison and Jack Levison, a result of the LFP Summer Seminar for Faculty at Seattle Pacific University in 2010. 

Charles Strauss (2011-2013), Assistant Professor of History, Mount Saint Mary’s University, announces that he has been selected to be a part of a fifteen member group for a three-year fellowship on Religion and U.S. Empire funded in part by the Kripke Center for the Study of Religion and Society at Creighton University.

Mary Streufert (2004-2006), Director of Justice for Women for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, announces the publication of a chapter, “Philosophical Kinship: Luther, Schleiermacher and Feminists on Reason” in When Reason Is a Whore: The Quandary of Lutheran Philosophy (Fortress Press, 2011), edited by Jennifer Hockenberry Dragseth.   Mary also gave several presentations, including the March 2012 American Academy of Religion Upper Midwest Regional Meeting.  She attended the July, 2012, Galatians and Theology Conference at St. Andrews University, where she gave the paper, “Gender and Justification within Empire: Toward a Christian Ethic of Gender Justice.” In August, 2012, Mary presented her seminar paper, “Luther’s Understanding of Justification and the Disruption of Masculinized Power” at the International Luther Congress, at the University of Helsinki.  Apparently this was the first feminist seminar at the International Luther Congress and was one of the largest.  In November 2012, Mary attended the American Academy of Religion, Schleiermacher Group, and presented her paper, “My Body, Your Body, Christ’s Body:  Ecclesiological Lessons from Schleiermacher and Abortion Debates.”  She also serves on the Schleiermacher Group steering committee.  In January 2013, Mary gave her paper, “Jesus Christ Beyond the Divide:  A Christian Feminist Proposal” at the Theological Institute of the University of Iceland.   In addition to teaching and writing in a variety of venues, Mary reports that she works with many ecumenical and Lutheran partners to create dialogue and change.  These opportunities include service as co-chair of the National Council of Churches Justice for Women Working Group, as a member of the Lutheran World Federation Gender Advisory Group, as collaborator with colleagues in Lutheran Women in Theological and Religious Studies, and as one of two staff persons working on the ELCA’s “Women and Justice:  One in Christ” social statement task force process, which began last fall.