Author: SJ Kessler

I’m Oakley. Hello. I graduated in 2018 with political science and religion degrees. Like many, I never intended to major in religion. My FTS, the Gospel of John, sucked me into the department and off I went. While at GAC, I loved my classes—one independent study on theology comes to mind—and, like most GAC students,…

Announcement: In a new Blog series, Gustavus Religion alumni Jared Morningstar (’18) and Oakley Clark (’18) will be reading and discussing works by Department faculty. Check back for their first post next month.

We are excited to announce that recently-graduated Religion Major Anna Duong-Topp (’20) has won this year’s Patricia Lindell Research Prize, awarded by the faculty of the Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library. Ms. Duong-Topp’s paper, “Ontological Homelessness as a Phenomenology of Belonging: Comparing the Nihilism of Martin Heidegger and Keiji Nishitani,” was selected from among dozens of…

This year, the Department of Religion celebrates its 60th anniversary. On Saturday, September 26th, 202o, dozens of current and former majors and minors, emeritus and current faculty, as well as the College’s President, came together on Zoom to virtually toast the sixtieth anniversary of the Department of Religion. Gustavus Adolphus College has, of course, taught…

This year, the Department welcomes a second new visiting faculty member, Dr. Robert Porwoll, Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion. Dr. Porwoll received his PhD from the University of Chicago, where he specialized in the History of Christianity.  This fall, Dr. Porwoll is teaching REL 132 Religion and Ecology and REL 253 Science and Religion. Keep watch for Dr. Porwoll’s J-Term…

The Department is proud and excited to welcome Dr. Rodney A. Caruthers II, our first Bruce Gray Postdoctoral Fellow. Dr. Caruthers received his PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2019, where he specialized in Second Temple Judaism and Christian Origins/New Testament. His dissertation was entitled Learning How to Write Narrative: Jewish Education during…

We are proud to announce that Megan Eide (’19), Religion major and recent graduate of Gustavus, has published her senior Religion thesis as an article in the Journal of Media and Religion, a peer-reviewed publication. Entitled “Religion in Children’s Visual Media: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Preschool Holiday Specials,” Ms. Eide’s article analyzes “depictions of…

Though the semester has officially begun, Labor Day has just passed us by, and a cold rain has settled on the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes, we can’t entirely brush off the joys and freedom of the summer.  For our final installment of this year’s “Summer Reading and Escapes,” we follow Dr. Mary Gaebler into…

The start of the fall term is less than two weeks away! And while plans for our return to campus remain in flux, the excitement around new classes and new ideas is clearly in the air. Autumn, thankfully, hasn’t quite come yet to Minnesota, but it’s definitely on the horizon. But we shouldn’t give up…

We’ve left the second week of August and entered the third. And my, things on campus just keep on changing! But reading and learning stay the same, and trying to think deeply about remains ever challenging. That’s true regardless of if one sits in a college library or in one’s own living room. Today it’s…