CATHOLIC STUDIES

University of California,
Santa Barbara

Department of Religious Studies

scholars from different disciplines and backgrounds connected by a tradition that spans the world

Faculty

Ann Taves, Virgil Cordano Professor of Catholic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies; modern Christianity and American religion

Debra Blumenthal, History; Medieval Europe, Spain

Rudy Busto, Religious Studies; race and religion in the United States, Chicano/Latino and Asian/Pacific American religions, evangelical Christianity, religious responses to colonialism

Juan E. Campo, Religious Studies; Catholics and Muslims in the Middle East, Catholic pilgrimage traditions in comparative perspective

Thomas Carlson, Religious Studies; Christianity and culture, religion and philosophy

Sarah Cline, History; colonial Latin America, race, religion, globalization

Francis A. Dutra, History; Iberia, Latin America, Portugese overseas empire, Spanish, Portugese, and Brazilizan Catholicism

Sharon Farmer, History; women, society, and religion in medieval history

L.O. Aranye Fradenburg, English; medieval English, gender and sexuality

Mario T. Garcia, Chicano Studies; Chicano and American race and identity

Carol Lansing, History; Medieval history

Christine Thomas, Religious Studies; Early Christianity, religions of the Roman Empire, archaeology and the study of religion

Elliot Wolfson, Religious Studies; Jewish mysticism and philosophy, gender construction and the history of religion

Tipton Visiting Professors

The J.E. & Lillian Byrne Tipton Distinguished Visiting Professorship in Catholic Studies enables the Department of Religious Studies to bring outstanding scholars and public figures to UCSB for a quarter or longer to teach, present public lectures, and conduct research.

Spring 2006 - Professor Daniel Bornstein, Texas A & M University. Bornstein specializes in the history of popular Catholicism in the Middle Ages. He taught two courses while at UCSB, one graduate and one undergraduate, and gave the First Annual Tipton Lecture, titled "At Home in the Parish: Priests and their Families in Medieval Italy," on April 18, 2006.

Spring 2007 - Professor Bernard McGinn, Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology and of the History of Christianity in the Divinity School and the Committees on Medieval Studies and on General Studies at the University of Chicago. McGinn specializes in the history of Christian spirituality and mysticism and is completing a five-volume history of Christian mysticism in the West under the general title The Presence of God, three volumes of which have appeared: The Origins of Mysticism; The Growth of Mysticism; and The Flowering of Mysticism. McGinn will teach two courses during Spring Quarter 2007 and give the Second Annual Tipton Lecture on April 19, 2007.

Spring 2008 - William A. Christian, Jr., an anthropologist and historian of religion, has been invited as the Tipton Professor for 2008. A specialist in Spanish Catholicism, Christian is widely recognized for his work on visions and visionaries spanning over a thousand years of European history. He has published a series of works on Spanish visionaries, including Person and God in a Spanish Valley (1972, rev. 1989), Local Religion in Sixteenth Century Spain (1981, rev. 1989), and Visionaries, The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ (1996). An independent scholar who resides in Spain, he is currently Visiting Professor of History at UC Berkeley and co-convener an SIAS Summer Institute of Religious Visions to be held in the Summers of 2007 and 2008. He will be teaching two courses in Spring 2008 at UCSB: RS 190WC Material Catholicisms and RS 292 Visions in Spain and the New World. In April he will give the Annual Tipton Lecture.

Spring 2009 - Professor Fernando Cervantes, Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol, Bristol, England has been invited as the Tipton Professor for 2009. Cervantes specializes in the cultural, religious, and intellectual history of early modern Spain and Spanish America. He has published extensively on the encounter between Christians and Native Americans in colonial Mexico. He is currently writing a book on the intellectual world of Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) that seeks to reassess the place of this major literary figure in the history of early modern humanism, the relations between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and the epistemological crisis of the early seventeenth century.

Spring 2010 - Professor Rowena Robinson, Associate Professor of Sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, India, has been invited as the Tipton Professor for 2010. Robinson specializes in the sociology of religion and Christianity in India. Her publications include Christians of India (2003), Sociology of Religion in India (2003), Religious Conversion in India (2003), and an ethnographic study of Catholics in Goa titled Conversion, Continuity, and Change (1998).

Spring 2011 - Jean-Luc Marion, Professor of Philosophy at Université de Paris, Sorbonne, and Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Professor of Catholic Studies and Professor of the Philosophy of Religions and Theology at the University of Chicago, served as the 2011 Tipton Distinguished Visiting Professor in Catholic Studies. Marion is the winner of the 1992 Grand Prix de Philosophie de l'Académie française, the 2008 Karl-Jaspers Preis, the 2012 Humboldt-Stiftung Prize, and was elected to l’Académie Française in 2008 and to Academia dei Lincei (Rome) in 2009. He specializes in the history of early modern philosophy, contemporary phenomenology, and the interplay of phenomenology and theology. His many publications in these areas include Being Given (2002), In Excess (2004), the Erotic Phenomenon (2006), The Visible and the Revealed (2008), God Without Being (1991, 2012) and most recently, Negative Certainties (2015). Marion was the keynote speaker at a conference devoted to his work held at UCSB from May 5-7, 2011. His keynote address, which was also the 6th Annual Tipton Lecture, was titled: “Resting, Moving, Loving: The Access to the Self According to Saint Augustine.”

Winter 2012 - Michele Dillon, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire, served as the 2012 Tipton Visiting Professor in Catholic Studies. Dillon specializes in the sociology of religion and culture, with a particular interest in authority, autonomy, and tradition in Catholicism. Her publications include Catholic Identity (1999), In the Course of a Lifetime: Tracing Religious Belief, Practice, and Change (with Paul Wink, 2007), Debating Divorce (1993), and American Catholics in Transition (with William D’Antonio; 2013). During Winter 2012, Dillon taught an undergraduate course titled “Roman Catholicism Today” (RS 126), and gave the 7th Annual Tipton Lecture, “American Catholics in the Twenty-First Century,” in which she argued that the Catholic Church is at a critical juncture as it confronts the decline in the number of ordained priests, demographic change, and the need to restore credibility in the wake of the clergy sex abuse scandals.

Spring 2013 - Thomas Csordas, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego, served as the 2013 Tipton Visiting Professor in Catholic Studies. He specializes in medical and psychological anthropology and the anthropology of religion with particular interests in anthropological theory, cultural phenomenology and embodiment, globalization and social change, and language and culture. He has conducted ethnographic research with charismatic Catholics, Navajo Indians, and adolescents in the American Southwest that highlight his core interests in the role of language and ritual in processes of self-transformation and healing. His publications include The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing (1994) and Language, Charisma, and Creativity: The Ritual Life of a Religious Movement (1997). On May 1, 2013, Csordas gave the 8th Annual Tipton Lecture, “Hammering the Devil with Prayer: The Contemporary Resurgence of Exorcism in the Catholic Church,” in which he presented his current research on Roman Catholic Rite of Exorcism in the United States and Italy and explored the interconnections between the recent resurgence of interest in exorcism, therapeutic processes, and conservative discourse on evil.

Winter 2014 - Amy Hollywood, Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies at the Harvard Divinity School, served as the 2014 Tipton Visiting Professor in Catholic Studies. Hollywood specializes in the study of mysticism in medieval and modern philosophy, theology, and poetry. She is the author of The Soul as Virgin Wife (2001), which received the Otto Grundler Prize for the best book in medieval studies from the International Congress of Medieval Studies; Sensible Ecstasy (2002); and Acute Melancholia and Other Essays, forthcoming in 2016, as well as editor of The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism (with Patricia Beckman, 2012). During her Winter 2014 visit, Hollywood taught a course titled, “Apophasis, Ecstasy, and Death in Christian Mysticism”. On January 22, 2014, Hollywood gave the 9th Annual Tipton Lecture, “Apophasis and Ecstasy, At the Limits of Gender,” in which she discussed the long-standing gender divide that affects the reception and interpretation of religious writings and the role scholars of religion may play in maintaining or potentially overthrowing this convention.

Winter 2015 - Regina Schwartz, Professor of English and Religion at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, served as the 2015 Tipton Visiting Professor in Catholic Studies. Schwartz specializes in seventeenth century literature and explores the relationship between philosophy, law, literature, and religion. She is the author of Remembering and Repeating: On Milton’s Theology and Poetics (1989), which won the James Holly Hanford Book Award; The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (1998), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; and, most recently, Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism: When God Left the World (2008), which examines ways in which the drama and poetry of the English Reformation were shaped by a sacramental vision of justice. On March 9, 2015, Schwartz gave the 10th Annual Tipton Lecture, “Love Your Enemies: Retribution and Forgiveness,” in which she discussed her continuing engagement with justice and the contexts in which it requires (or resists) clarification, from Shakespeare to the Hebrew Bible.

Cordano Scholars

Each year one or two entering doctoral students with interests related to Catholic Studies are designated as Cordano Scholars. Funds from the Cordano Endowment are utilized to help defray the cost of their graduate education.

2005 - Kerry San Chirico, Christian-Hindu interaction and exchange in South Asia.

2006 - Christine Baker, Catholic missions and Native Americans.

2006 - Nathan Schneider, Catholicism and modern thought.

2007 - Andrea Neuhoff, American Catholic spirituality.

2007 - Melinda Pitarre, modern Catholic spirituality.

Cordano Fellows

Beginning in 2009, we began awarding highly competitive multi-year Cordano Fellowship packages as funds permitted.

2009 - Rafael Gamboa, Latino/a Religion and Popular Culture

2010 - Lauren Horn Griffin, Early Modern Catholicism

2013 - Kolby Knight, American Catholicism

2015 - Yevgeniy Runkevich, Early Christianity

current as of: 9/29/2015