Faculty Biographies
Gretchen Buggeln, Professor of Art History and Humanities
Ph.D. IN AMERICAN STUDIES | YALE UNIVERSITY
Gretchen Buggeln holds the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christianity and the Arts. She writes and teaches about the intersections of Christian belief and the material world. Her primary research interest is American sacred spaces, the topic of her books “Temples of Grace” (2003) and “The Suburban Church” (2015). More recently she has co-edited two books on the interpretation of religion and religious artifacts in museums: “Religion in Museums: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives” (2016) and “Interpreting Religion at Museums and Historic Sites” (2018). She is currently working on “Faith in Place,” a book defining a vernacular approach to the study of religious architecture. She is a past president of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, an international organization dedicated to the appreciation, study, and preservation of common buildings and landscapes.
Samuel Graber, Associate Professor of Humanities and Literature
Ph.D. IN AMERICAN STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
Sam Graber’s interests include nineteenth-century literature and culture, the American Civil War, transatlantic studies, memory studies, and religion. In Christ College, he teaches the first-year program; Word & Image; African American Literature; Literatures of Freedom; Literature at the Movies; American Identity; Interpretation: Self, Culture, Society; and American War Literature. His first book, “Twice-Divided Nation: National Memory, Transatlantic News, and American Literature in the Civil War Era,” was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2019. He’s also published essays in numerous scholarly journals and collections, including ESQ, The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, “Literary Cultures of the American Civil War,” and “The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction.”
Agnes Howard, Adjunct Assistant Professor in Humanities
Ph.D. IN HISTORY | UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
Agnes Howard teaches in the first-year program, the Christian Tradition, and seminars on aspects of modern United States cultural history. Her research centers on American history, with special interest in Puritan New England, women’s monasticism, and the culture of maternity and family life. Her book, “Showing: What Pregnancy Tells Us about Being Human” (Eerdmans, 2020), examines ideas and practices around birth in the past and present. Her recent writing has appeared in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, United States Catholic Historian, Commonweal, Christianity Today, and other publications. Although primarily focused on U.S. history, she has taught in Orvieto, Italy, at the Gordon-in-Orvieto program, and is researching women’s religious life in one of the city’s many monasteries.
Thomas Albert Howard, Professor of Humanities and History
Ph.D. IN EUROPEAN INTELLECTUAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY | UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
Thomas Albert (Tal) Howard holds the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christian Ethics. He also serves as a Senior Fellow for the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts. He is the author or editor of several books, including “The Faiths of Others: A History of Interreligious Dialogue” (Yale University Press, 2021), “The Pope and the Professor: Pius IX , Ignaz von Döllinger, and the Quandary of the Modern Age” (Oxford University Press, 2017), and “Remembering the Reformation: An Inquiry into the Meanings of Protestantism” (Oxford University Press, 2016). His writings have appeared in academic journals, such as the Journal of the History of Ideas and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and in more general venues such as Hedgehog Review, Wall Street Journal, Modern Age, Touchstone, Inside Higher Ed, National Interest, Christian Century, First Things, and Commonweal. He is currently working on two book projects: “Modern Christian Theology: An Intellectual History” (Princeton University Press) and “Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History” (Yale University Press, 2025).
Slavica Jakelić, Associate Professor of Humanities and Social Thought
Ph.D. IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES | BOSTON UNIVERSITY
Slavica Jakelić is the Richard P. Baepler Distinguished Professor in the Humanities. Her scholarly interests and publications center on religion and nationalism, religious and secular humanisms, theories of religion and secularism, theories of modernity, and interreligious conflict and dialogue. She has worked at or was a fellow of a number of interdisciplinary institutes in Europe and the United States. She is a Senior Fellow of the national project “Religion & Its Publics,” placed at the University of Virginia, where she was a faculty member and co-director at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture for several years. She is also a Senior Fellow of the international project “Orthodoxy and Human Rights,” housed at Fordham University. Her writings have appeared in journals such as the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Journal of Religious Ethics, Political Theology, The Hedgehog Review, The Review of Faith & International Affairs, Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, and Commonweal. She co-edited three volumes: “The Future of the Study of Religion,” “Crossing Boundaries: From Syria to Slovakia,” and The Hedgehog Review’s issue “After Secularization.” She is the author of “Collectivistic Religions” (2010/2016) and “Pluralizing Humanism” (forthcoming). She is currently working on two books, “Both Freedom and Belonging: Essays on Religion, Nationalism, and Solidarity” (in Croatian; under contract with TIM Press) and “Ethical Nationalisms.”
Jennifer Prough, Dean and Professor of Humanities and East Asian Studies
Ph.D. IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY | DUKE UNIVERSITY
Jennifer Prough’s research and teaching both examine issues of representation and the ways that cultural meanings are produced, managed, experienced, and interpreted through mass culture. Her book entitled “Straight from the Heart: Gender, Intimacy, and the Cultural Production of Shōjo Manga” (University of Hawai’i Press, 2011) examines the production of girls’ comics in Japan through ethnographic analysis. Her book “Kyoto Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Contemporary Kyoto” (University of Hawai’i Press, 2022) seeks to understand the ways that tradition, history, and culture are produced, packaged, promoted, and consumed in Kyoto today. In addition to teaching Interpretation: Self, Culture, Society and in the first-year program, she teaches seminars on urban Japan, Japanese visual culture, tourism, and living together across difference. She is a proud Christ College alumna.
Matthew Puffer, Associate Professor of Humanities and Ethics
Ph.D. IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
Matthew Puffer received a bachelor of science in chemical engineering from North Carolina State University, a master of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, and his Ph.D. in religious studies (theology, ethics, and culture) from the University of Virginia. His research in comparative religious ethics examines competing normative visions of the human person, especially rival interpretations of human dignity and the imago dei and their implications for issues in medical, economic, environmental, and social ethics. He is currently working on a monograph that examines Augustine’s understanding of the imago dei as it develops across a half-century of letters, sermons, and treatises. He teaches regularly in the first-year program, the Christian Tradition, and upper-level seminars, including Science, Technology, and Society.
Amanda Ruud, Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities and Literature
Ph.D. IN ENGLISH | UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Amanda Ruud’s research and teaching focus on the literature and drama of the English Renaissance. A Shakespeare scholar, her research interests include the relationship between English drama and the visual arts, classical reception, religion and literature, and the ethics of representing loss and grief in drama. She brings her theater interest into the classroom through courses that blend study and performance, including the Shakespeare Live seminar. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California with support from the USC Visual Studies Research Institute and the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute. She served as a Lilly Postdoctoral Fellow from 2021-2023 . Her research appears in English Literary Renaissance, Philological Quarterly, “The Routledge Companion to Adaptation,” and “The Shakespearean Death Arts: Hamlet Among the Tombs.” In Christ College, she teaches in the first-year program, coordinates the Oxford debates, and serves as director of the first-year production.
Julien Smith, Professor of Humanities and Theology
Ph.D. IN RELIGION | BAYLOR UNIVERSITY
Julien Smith’s scholarly interests center on biblical texts and traditions. He has written on a variety of New Testament apocryphal and literary subjects, including Ephesians, Acts, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the novelist Walker Percy. His first book, “Christ the Ideal King: Cultural Context, Rhetorical Strategy, and the Power of Divine Monarchy in Ephesians,” was published in 2011 . Recent publications include “The Recovery of Creatureliness” in Sapientia, and “How to Read Yourself Into Genesis” in Christianity Today. Smith teaches the Christian Tradition; seminars on Jesus, Paul, Theology & Ecology; and in the first-year program. His most recent book, “Paul and the Good Life: Transformation and Citizenship in the Commonwealth of God,” was published by Baylor University Press in 2020. He is currently working on an article addressing the issue of polarization in church-related higher education.
Edward Upton, Associate Professor of Humanities, Religion, and Literature
Ph.D. IN RELIGION AND LITERATURE | UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Edward Upton’s research centers on T.S. Eliot’s poetic engagement with sources from ancient India. He is the author of “Desire and the Ascetic Ideal: Buddhism and Hinduism in the Works of T.S. Eliot” (University of Virginia Press, 2023). His work has appeared in the Journal of Religion, Religion and Literature, and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. His interests include modern poetry, hermeneutics, Buddhist and Hindu thought, literary criticism, the history of orientalism, the history of religions, and modern theology. He teaches courses on religion, theology, and literature, including The Devil and the Problem of Evil in Literature, Beauty and the Art of Attention, and Literature and the Ethics of Recognition, in addition to teaching in the first-year program.
