Archives: People

Dr. Linda Pittman is Professor of Geography and Religion at Richard Bland College of the College of William and Mary in Petersburg, Virginia. She has studied the relationship between religion and place since graduate school. Her particular areas of interest include pilgrimage and monasticism.

Leif Castren is a program associate with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Leif lives in DC but calls Montana home. Leif earned a BA in Biology from Middlebury College, an MA in Religion from Yale Divinity School, an MEM from Yale School of the Environment, and a certificate from the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. As a Fulbright research fellow to Chile, Leif investigated the impacts of volcanic eruptions on forest ecosystems. Through his work at AAAS, Leif seeks to create opportunities for mutual learning around questions raised at the interface of religious life and ongoing scientific research. In focus, Leif supports theological schools as they engage forefront science through the Science for Seminaries project, draws upon experiences in scholarship, teaching, and counseling.

Kim S. Theriault is a Professor of Art at the University of Southern Maine. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Virginia and is Professor Emerita of Modernist and Contemporary Art History, Theory, and Criticism at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. Her book, Rethinking Arshile Gorky (Pennsylvania State University Press), explores the themes of displacement, trauma, and memory, as well as identifying issues of identity, originality, and mourning in Gorky’s work.

Dr. John W. Fadden is an adjunct instructor in the Religious Studies department at St. John Fisher University in Rochester, NY. He has had an interest in religion and space since graduate school. His academic training is in biblical studies broadly conceived.

Jefferson Calico is a teacher, writer, and religious studies scholar working in the Appalachian region of the upper South at the University of the Cumberlands. His book Being Viking: Heathenism in Contemporary Americawas published by Equinox in 2018.

Frank Vitale IV is Assistant Professor, University Archivist and Special Collections Librarian at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. His historical research focuses on the Native American boarding school movement of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries in the United States, with a particular focus on the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (Carlisle, PA) and the Martinsburg Indian School at Juniata Collegiate Institute (Martinsburg, PA). He also serves as a Project Partner with the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center at Dickinson College. His other areas of research include archival outreach and instruction as well as the digital humanities.

David Fazzino is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania.

Claire Rostov is a doctoral student in American Religion at Duke University. She studies material culture, religion, consumption, media, and waste in the context of the United States. Her work engages interdisciplinary theories and methods. Claire is a James B. Duke Fellow, and she holds an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School and a B.A. from Carleton College.

Calynn Dowler is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of religious studies and environmental anthropology. Her current book project explores placemaking and ethico-religious relationships with water in the Sundarbans delta of West Bengal, India.

The Rev. Dr. Barbara R. Rossing is professor of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, where she has taught since 1994. She loves to teach and preach about the Bible, including the Bible’s role in public life.

Dr. Anna Burnley is Associate Professor of Education and ESOL Coordinator at Flagler College in Tallahassee, Florida, where she teaches additional language acquisition pedagogy. As an interdisciplinary scholar, she has presented internationally at conferences in Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, and Scotland. Her writings include multiple peer-reviewed publications in Denmark, Germany, and the U.S., with research corpora focusing on PK-16 pedagogy of globally-shared stories across content areas, as well as re-introduction of lesser-known writers to new audiences. In 2019 she served as an invited delegate representing Flagler College at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Germany, where she returned in 2022 as an invited speaker at the university’s seminar series on race and pedagogy.