During my 31 years on the faculty of Berea College, I held several positions: Head of Public Services in Hutchins Library, Head of Special Collections and Archives, Director of General Education, Chair of Academic Division V, and Interim Associate Provost. I taught primarily in Berea’s interdisciplinary General Studies core curriculum and, on occasion, in the Religion and History Departments, respectively. It was my privilege to teach the History and Memory of the Holocaust from 1999 to 2023, six times as a team-taught course with three weeks of travel in Europe, once as part of the Kentucky Institute for International Studies (KIIS) Berlin Program, and ten times as an on-campus class. In 2024 I received the Seabury Award for Excellence in Teaching. My book Thoughts that Burned: William Goodell, Human Rights, and the Abolition of American Slavery was published by Cornell University Press in April 2025.
- Ph.D., History of Religious Thought, University of Iowa, 1989
- M.A., Library Science, University of Iowa, 1988
- M.A., English, University of Louisville, 1980
- M.A., Theology, Vanderbilt University, 1977
- B.A., English, Campbellsville College, 1976
BOOK
Thoughts that Burned: William Goodell, Human Rights, and the Abolition of Slavery (Cornell University Press, April 2025)ARTICLES
“Radical Orthodoxy: William Goodell and the Abolition of American Slavery.” New England Quarterly, December 2018.
“The Weatherford-Hammond Collection.” The Encyclopedia of Appalachia. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2006.
“Woodson, Carter G. (1875–1950).” The Encyclopedia of Appalachia. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2006.
“The Habit of Seeking: Liberal Education and the Library at Berea College,” Library Trends, Fall 1995.
Guest Editor, Special Issue on Liberation Theology, Counseling and Values, October 1986.
“Liberation Theology: An Introduction to Its History and Themes,” Counseling and Values, October 1986.
“No Second-hand Religion: Thomas Erskine’s Critique of Religious Authorities,” Church History, June 1985.
“Coleridge as Hermeneut,” Anglican Theological Review, April 1984.
“Introspection, Conscience and Augustine’s Confessions,” Church Divinity 1982.
“Frost’s ‘In Hardwood Groves,’” Explicator, Spring 1982.
“That Profound Silence: The Failure of Theodicy in Melville’s Pierre,” Southern Humanities Review, Summer 1981.BOOK REVIEWS
Richard E, Brantley, Anglo-American Antiphony: The Late Romanticism of Tennyson and Emerson, Church History, June 1995.
Michael P. Hornsby-Smith, Roman Catholic Beliefs in England, The Journal of Religion, January 1993.
David Skilton, ed., The Early and Mid-Victorian Novel, Christianity and Literature, 1993
F. E. Peters, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, 3 Vols., Cithara, May 1991.
Josef L. Altholz, The Religious Press in Britain, 1760-1900, Critical Review of Books in Religion, 1991.
Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, Christian Century 7 November 1990.
Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling, Christian Century 31 October 1990.