Teaching

Since joining the Religion department in the fall of 2010, I have explored a variety of issues and themes in my courses, including but not limited to the role of biblical translation and interpretation in the formation of Christian doctrine and practice.  Every fall, I teach “the Christian Tradition,” which is an introduction to the origins and global adaptations of Christianity.  Other courses I teach frequently are “the History of the Bible,” a seminar on the development of the Bible as a book and sacred text (with special emphasis on the Reformation period to the present), as well as “Christianity in Early Modern Europe,” a lecture and discussion course on the Reformation and Counter-Reformation from 1500-1700, with attention to emerging colonial contexts in the Americas and Asia.  I work closely with Special Collections curator, Andrew Wentink, to introduce students to early printed books and archival materials as they relate to different aspects of these courses, and I provide opportunities for projects, presentations, and papers that encourage hands-on research with a wide assortment of rare Bibles, theological writings, and missionary texts currently held in the Middlebury College archives.

In Christianity today, the fastest area of growth and conversion is Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, and intellectual trends are largely defined and challenged by contextualized theologies of liberation, so I developed a new course that compares the influence of these movements in contemporary global Christianity, taught in Spring 2011.  I will teach a course on Global Pentecostalism in Winter Term 2013, with a field trip to a Boston-area mega church.    New courses in 2012-13 include a seminar on Roman Catholicism from Trent to Today (Fall 2012) and a 200-level course in Feminist Theology (Spring 2013), cross-listed with Women's and Gender Studies.  I am scheduled to be on leave in 2013-14.

Research Interests

My current research centers on the reception of the King James Bible (KJB), whose 400^th anniversary was celebrated in 2011 at a host of conferences and exhibitions worldwide.  I work specifically on the Catholic reception of the KJB, drawing attention to the criticisms posed by Catholics from 1611 through 1911 and the effect that those attacks had in polarizing Protestant communities in England, Ireland, the United States, either to defend the authority and literary excellence of the version or to campaign for a large-scale revision that eventually resulted in the Revised Version of 1882-85.  Thanks to travel grants from Middlebury College, I was able to present selections of my work at KJB anniversary conferences at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), the Ohio State University, and the University of York (England).  I gave invited lectures in 2011 at Cambridge University, the University of Oxford, Princeton University, the Folger Institute (Washington, D.C.), and Christian Brothers University (Memphis). 

I am also interested in the Rheims-Douai Bible and controversies regarding its publication and reception from the sixteenth century onwards, as well as other Catholic vernacular Bibles of the Counter-Reformation period.  Areas in which I intend to pursue further research include Latin Bibles of the Reformation, the King James Only movement, the Douai-Rheims Bible in American Catholicism, the Bible in the early American west, and the translation and use of the Bible in the history of Christian missions (especially in China) as well as in contemporary global Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity.

Education

D.Phil., University of Oxford (Lincoln College), Theology.  Supervised by Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, Knight, and Professor Peter McCullough.

M.A., Boston University, Editorial Studies (with a thesis on sixteenth-century biblical annotation).  Supervised by Sir Geoffrey Hill.

B.A., Boston University, English with a minor in Philosophy, Summa Cum Laude with Distinction.

Publications

“Writing the History of the English Bible:  A Review of Recent Scholarship,” Religion Compass 5:7(July 2011), 300-313.  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00286.x/pdf  A video abstract for this article can be found at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu9uOfDX_Tw, and an accompanying "Teaching and Learning Guide" appeared in the January 2013 issue of Religon Compass.

"The King James Bible's 400th Anniversary in Retrospect," Focus On article, Oxford Biblical Studies Online, ed. Michael Coogan (May 1, 2012).  http://www.oup.com/obso/currentfocus/

Catholic Critics of the King James Bible, 1611-1911 (Ashgate, forthcoming in 2013).

“The Bible in Roman Catholic Theology to c. 1750,” in The New Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. III:  the Early Modern World, c. 1450-1750, ed. Euan Cameron, forthcoming.

“English Catholics and the King James Bible:  from Gregory Martin to Richard Challoner,” in Early Modern Bibles in Britain and Ireland, ed. Robert Armstrong, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History, Ashgate, forthcoming.

“Augustine and Apocalypticism in the Polemical Annotations of the Rheims New Testament Controversy,” in Augustine and Apocalyptic, ed. Kim Paffenroth and Kari Kloos, Lexington Books, forthcoming.

In Progress

“Catholic Bibles, Protestant Methods?  A Comparative Study of Sixteenth-Century Vernacular Bibles,” article in preparation.

Catholic Vernacular Bibles of the Counter-Reformation:  a book-length research project on German, French, and English Catholic Bibles from the 1520s through the eighteenth century, with attention to Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian Vulgate-based versions.