By Sam Grossman

With elements of traditional memoir, biography and lyric essay, these nonfiction works chronicle some of the diverse experiences of the UVA alumni community.

In his newest book, UVA religious studies professor Charles Marsh explores the ways in which his Christian upbringing affected his mental health. For years he suffered from panic attacks and depression, but “we did not do therapy—my family, my particular evangelical coterie,” he writes. With vulnerability and humor, Marsh explains how he finally sought mental health treatment. Through years of Freudian psychoanalysis, he slowly sheds the secrecy and shame he was “primed for,” becoming “freer, and somehow more unified.” In the end, Marsh remains devoted to Christianity, with the understanding that it’s “much larger and more encompassing than the churches of my childhood.”

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The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.