2009 Conferece Speaker Biographical Information
Amy DeRogatis is Associate Professor of Religion and American Culture. She has taught at Michigan State since 1998. DeRogatis teaches courses about Religion in the United States and Religion, Sexuality and Gender, as well as REL 101: Exploring Religions. She has received a national recognition for excellence in undergraduate teaching of Religious Studies. DeRogatis' first book, Moral Geography: Maps, Missionaries and the American Frontier (Columbia, 2003), has been reviewed in Religious Studies and American History journals. She is the author of numerous essays on religion and American culture. Her most recent, “What Would Jesus Do? Sexuality and Salvation in Protestant Evangelical Sex Manuals, 1950s to the Present”, can be found in Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture (March 2005). DeRogatis' Women and Religion in the United States Since the 1960s is to be published by Columbia University Press.
Timothy Larsen is McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has been a Visiting Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge. His work on secularization includes an article in the scholarly journal Pro Ecclesia entitled, “Dechristendomization as an Alternative to Secularization: Theology, History, and Sociology in Conversation.” He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford University Press, 2008).
David Nichols, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University. He recently completed his PhD. in Philosophy of Religion from Boston Universit . Previous degrees include an M.A. from Michigan State University in Philosophy and a B.A. from the University of Michigan in Philosophy and Religious Studies. His research interests are in continental philosophy, Greek philosophy, and philosophy of religion.
Sociologist John Schmalzbauer teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at Missouri State University, where he holds the Blanche Gorman Strong Chair in Protestant Studies. He is the author of People of Faith: Religious Conviction in American Journalism and Higher Education ( Cornell University Press, 2003). He is co-investigator on the National Study of Campus Ministries, the first comprehensive study of campus ministers since the 1960s. Schmalzbauer is writing a book on the return of religion in American higher education with historian Kathleen Mahoney. He currently blogs on the Evangelical Epicenters for The Christian Science Monitor's "Patchwork Nation" project and on the Immanent Frame. His teaching focuses on the role of religion in popular culture, American evangelicalism, and Ozarks religious life.
Arthur Versluis, Professor in the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University, holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and has published numerous books and articles. Among his books are Magic and Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esotericism (Rowman Littlefield, 2007), The New Inquisitions: Heretic-hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism (Oxford UP, 2006), Restoring Paradise: Esoteric Transmission through Literature and Art (SUNY: 2004); The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance (Oxford UP: 2001); Wisdom's Book: The Sophia Anthology, (Paragon House, 2000); Island Farm (MSU Press, 2000); Wisdom's Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition (SUNY: 1999); and American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions -(Oxford UP, 1993). His family has owned a commercial farm in West Michigan for several generations, and so he also published a book called Island Farm about the family farm, and about family farming in the modern era. Versluis was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to Germany, and is the founding editor of Esoterica, and co-editor of JSR: Journal for the Study of Radicalism. He is the founding president of the Association for the Study of Esotericism.