John Kiess is an assistant professor of theology at Loyola University Maryland. He completed his Ph.D. in theology and ethics at Duke University. As a George J. Mitchell Scholar, he earned his M.A. in comparative ethnic conflict at Queen’s University Belfast and M.Phil in theology from Cambridge University. His doctoral dissertation explored the ethics of war through the lens of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he conducted fieldwork in 2008-2009. In addition to his work on conflict and peacemaking, he is also interested in political theology, political theory, and philosophy, and is currently completing a book entitled Hannah Arendt and Theology, (forthcoming T&T Clark, October, 2014).

Vanessa Ochs is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies Program at the University of Virginia where she teaches courses in Judaism, the anthropology of religion, and spiritual writing. She is working on two projects now, which are linked not only to each other, but to her previous work in the study of religion and material culture and the study of Jewish ritual innovation. The first project is a “biography” of the Passover Haggadah, which will be part of a series of “biographies” of canonical texts to be published by Princeton University Press. The second is a multi-year, multi-site ethnography of Jewish homes in America that answers a question she has long been pondering, “What—from the perspective of material culture—makes a Jewish home Jewish?” To find more information about Vanessa’s work, click here.

To learn more about Vanessa at her author’s page, click here.

Valerie C. Cooper is the associate professor of black church studies at Duke Divinity School. In her research and teaching, Valerie examines issues of religion, race, and society. In her research for the Virginia Seminar, Valerie evaluates the successes and failures of the racial reconciliation efforts of Christian congregations and ministries from the 1990s to the present. In addition to examining why such efforts frequently fall short of their stated goals, she also hopes to propose methods for achieving meaningful cross-racial relationships in America’s still very segregated churches and religious organizations.

Learn more about Valerie by visiting her author’s page here.

Shannon Gayk is associate professor of medieval literature at Indiana University in Bloomington and was recently appointed a fellow at the National Humanities Center for 2014-15. Her recent books explore the relationships among aesthetics, ethics, and theology in late-medieval England. She is currently completing several projects, including a book on pre-modern religious lyric, a study of the arma Christi (the instruments of Christ’s Passion) during the English reformations, and a co-edited collection of essays focusing on the changing place of sacred objects in medieval and early modern Europe.

Learn more about Shannon by visiting her author’s page here.

Virginia Seminar Project: Erecting the Pulpit: Muscular Christianity from Victoria to Viagra

Amy Laura Hall is an associate professor of Christian ethics at Duke Divinity school.

When asked to share a writing quirk with us she said:

I am a social bee in an introvert’s job. I write best when in active conversation with genuine people who disagree with me or whose intellectual passions are contrary to my own. (The absolute worst is researching liars, because there is no point arguing with a real faker.) I do also need to alternate between focused, close reading and synthetic research. While thinking through variations on muscular Christianity, for example, I am also editing a book on Julian of Norwich.

Follow Amy Laura on Twitter @ProfligateGrace. Read her blog, here. Visit her author’s page, here.

Virginia Seminar Project: Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious

David Dark is an assistant professor at Belmont University and the author of The Sacredness of Questioning Everything; Everyday Apocalypse: The Sacred Revealed in Radiohead, The Simpsons and Other Pop Culture Icons and The Gospel According To America: A Meditation on a God-blessed, Christ-haunted Idea, which was included in Publishers’ Weekly’s top religious books of 2005. He also contributed a chapter to the book Radiohead and Philosophy: Fitter Happier More Deductive (Chicago: Open Court, 2009). Following years of teaching high school English, Dark recently received a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. He also currently teaches at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.

Some fun facts about David…

Q: What is your favorite book (or two or few)?
DD: Ursula K. Le Guin, Left Hand of Darkness; James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games; Lewis Hyde, The Gift; Wendell Berry, What Are People For?

Q: What is your favorite book to require for classes you teach?
DD: Philip K. Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Q: What are some of your favorite classes to teach? Why?
DD: Religion and Science Fiction. They’re the book ends of just about everything I can think of.

Q: Who are the authors you most admire?
DD: Will Campbell, Octavia Butler, Mary Ruefle, Czeslaw Milosz, Gregory Orr, Thomas Merton, Guy Davenport, Robert Bellah, Flannery O’Connor, Albert Camus, Eugene Peterson, Dorothee Soelle, W.E.B. Dubois, Thomas Pynchon, and Wendell Berry.

Q: Who are your teaching/writing influences?
DD: Doris Dark, Henri Nouwen, and Parker Palmer.

Q: Have any writing quirks?
DD: Writing a letter, an essay, a chapter, or a book serves well to assure me that all my notes and underlinings (or most of them) don’t go completely to waste. I try to be a good steward of my obsessive compulsions.

A resident of Nashville, Tennessee, David attempts to raise children and live a life of mindfulness with singer/songwriter Sarah Masen. Follow David on Twitter @DavidDark and his tumblr page “Dark Matter” here.

To learn more about David, visit his author’s page here.