Theology News and Accomplishments

Highlights Fall 2024

Professor George E. Demacopoulos was re-elected as President of the Byzantine Studies Association of North America.

Professor Michael Peppard presented "The Spiritual Exercises of Springsteen" at the biennial conference on the Catholic Imagination, this year held at the University of Notre Dame. A shorter version of the presentation was published simultaneously in Notre Dame magazine here.

Lisa Holsberg, PhD '21, presented her paper, "Truth, Lies, and the Name of Berdyaev in the 2010s" at Religion, Human Dignity, and Human Rights: New Paradigms for Russia and the West: A Conference in Honor of Nikolai Berdyaev at 150, November 1-2, 2024, at The Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education, University of Florida, co-hosted by the Northwestern University Research Initiative in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought.

Luis Josué Salés, PhD '18 has two forthcoming publications in December: Maximos the Confessor: Androprimacy and Sexual Difference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Maximos the Confessor: Four Hundred Chapters on Love. Popular Patristics Series 61 (Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2024).

Taylor Ott, PhD '21's first book, Conflict and Catholic Social Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Approach will be published on November 1st with Routledge.

Prof. Emeritus Richard Viladesau has published a book of pastoral reflections: New Homilies for Sundays, Year C. (Amazon KDP, 2024)

Lisa Holsberg (PhD '21) was awarded a 2024 Clarke Chambers Travel Fellowship to conduct archival research on 20th century ecumenical relationships between Russian Orthodox, French Catholics, and American evangelical Protestants in the Kautz Family YMCA Archives at the University of Minnesota.

PhD student Timothy Perron presented papers at three conferences this past year: 

• “Human Ecology as an Approach to Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Vatican Documents.” Catholic Theological Society of America Conference, Baltimore, MD, June 2024.
• “Grappling with the co-existence of vulnerability and flourishing for women: The Sexed/Gendered Body’s Influence in the Concept of God in the theologies of Mary Daly and Elizabeth Johnson.” College Theology Society Annual Conference, Regis University (Denver, CO), May 2024.
• “Mixed Identities: Strands of Queer and Feminist Theology in the Anthropology Pope John Paul II. Koinonia Forum, Princeton TheologicalSeminary, March 2024.

Professor Larry Welborn has published “Household Cults as Proximate Analogues for Pauline Christ Groups” in Everyday Life in Graeco-Roman Times:  Documentary Papyri and the New Testament, ed. Christina M. Kreinecker. (Leiden:  Brill, 2024) 207-224.

PhD student Sadie Yates published her first academic article "You Kept Me Safe on My Mother's Breast: The Breastfeeding Mother, Women's Embodiment, and the Eucharist" in Worship. Sadie's article was also featured on the cover of the printed journal.

Dave de la Fuente (Ph.D. 24) presented "Saving Kapwa: Investigating Decolonial Pneumatology Among Filipino-American Catholic Charismatics" at the 2024 Catholic Theological Society of America convention in June 2024. He also presented "Missed Receptions of Ecclesial Diversity: Rerouting the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and Catholic Pneumatology Through a Retrieval of the Azusa Street Revival of 1906" at the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network Conference on Embodying Ecclesial Diversity in late June 2024. He was one of four EI participants to receive a Graymoor Ecumenical and Interreligious Institute Scholarship for that gathering. Finally, Dave contributed the essay "Summoning Systematics to Responsibility: Paul Ricoeur, M. Shawn Copeland, and the Relationship Between Scripture and Theological Foundations" in Joseph K. Gordon, editor. Critical Realism and the Christian Scriptures: Foundations and Readings. Marquette Studies in Theology94. Marquette University Press, 2024.

Dr. Cristina Traina's essay, A Catholic Feminist’s Journey with Orthodox Saints, was published by Public Orthodoxy. Read it here.

Dr. Rufus Burnett was awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor. Learn more about Dr. Burnett’s work here. 

Fr. Thomas Massaro, SJ was appointed as the new McGinley Professor of Religion and Society. Learn more about the McGinley Chair here.

Professor Aristotle "Telly" Papanikolaou, Archbishop Demetrios Chair in Orthodox Theology and Culture and Co-Director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center, was named the University of Chicago Divinity School Alum of the Year for 2024.  He was also appointed as a McDonald Distinguished Senior Fellow for the Emory Center for the Study of Law and Religion.

Ashley Purpura, Ph.D., GSAS ’14, associate professor at Purdue University and visiting associate professor at Harvard Divinity School, addressed current disagreements about the participation of LGBTQ people in today’s Eastern Orthodox Church in conversation with Professor Cristina Traina on March 6. Dr. Purpura emphasized that the Orthodox Christian tradition can be a resource for acceptance and affirmation of the experiences of the LGBTQ faithful. Read the full story here.

Distinguished Professor Emerita Dr. Elizabeth A. Johnson published Come, Have Breakfast: Meditations on God and the Earth through Orbis Books in February.

Dr. Cristina L. H. Traina, Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Chair in Catholic Theology, published her book, Finitude, Feminism, and Flourishing: On Being Mortal, Like Everyone Else through Paulist Press in March 2024. In her latest work, Prof. Traina argues that "the divine gift of finitude means that we cannot flourish without each other." "Flourishing is embodied, messy, interdependent, tragic, joyful, always a work in progress—and our common calling."

Dr. Larry Welborn, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, published a new co-authored/co-edited book,  The Village in Antiquity and the Rise of Christianity, through T. & T. Clark.

Two 2023 THRS graduates earn awards from Fulbright U.S. Student Program

Two 2023 Fordham graduates whose degrees included majors in Theology and Religious Studies earned awards from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. They are part of a group of fifteen Fordham students and alumni who received scholarships through the Fulbright program this year, the highest one-year total for the University yet to date. Chris Gosier's Fordham Now article on the award recipients includes the following information on the award recipients.

• Anna Nowalk, FCLC ’23, from Virginia, who earned a bachelor’s degree in theology religious studies with minors in philosophy and peace and justice studies, received a research award for study in El Salvador.
• Christian Ramirez, FCRH ’23, who is from Minnesota and earned a bachelor’s degree in English and theology religious studies, with a minor in Spanish, was awarded an English teaching assistantship to Colombia.