About the Contributors
Brett Salkeld is a doctoral student in Theology at Regis College, Toronto. He is married with two wonderful children (so far). Outside of theology, his interests include the Toronto Blue Jays, rock’n'roll music and cookware with a lifetime warranty. Brett is the author of two books, the award-winning How Far Can We Go? A Catholic Guide to Sex and Dating (Novalis, 2009; co-author actually) and Can Catholics and Evangelicals Agree about Purgatory and the Last Judgment? (Paulist Press, 2011). The second is a version of his Master’s thesis. From these titles, the careful observer will discern his interests in sex and ecumenism. The link? Where is the Church’s credibility at stake? Brett is writing his doctoral dissertation on the question of Christ’s Presence in the Eucharist as a topic of ecumenical dialogue.
Gerald L. Campbell was educated at Gonzaga University (Philosophy), St. Louis University (Philosophy), Georgetown University (Philosophy), and the Catholic University of America (International Relations). He was a senior staff member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1976 to 1985, the Director of Policy and Research for the National Security Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 to 1980, the Senior Advisor to the Director of the United States Information Agency from 1985 to 1990, and the Special Assistant to the Administrator, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Programs, at the U.S. Department of Justice from 1992 to 1993. From 1997 to 2001, Campbell was the Senior Advisor to the Commissioner of Health for the State of Texas. Until recently, he was President and a member of the Board of Directors of The Impact Group, Inc., a non-profit education foundation located in Washington, D.C. and Tyson’s Corner, Virginia. In June 1990, he began to inquire into the nature, root cause, and the spiritual dynamics of socially dysfunctional behaviors. He spent nearly five years exploring the streets of Washington, D.C., associating with and befriending the homeless, violent youth, and substance abusers. With camera and tape recorder in hand, he took black and white photographic images — and recorded the personal stories — of many of these individuals. He also recorded the stories of many teenagers who had been incarcerated for capital crimes.
Henry Karlson, born in Augusta Georgia, and raised in Indianapolis, is naturally a Southerner but culturally a Mid-Westerner. Ever confused by this enigma, he has taken a life-long interest in paradoxes, adding more and more of them to his life as he tries to work out his own salvation with much fear and trembling. Raised a Southern Baptist, he converted to the Catholic faith as a Byzantine Catholic on Pascha 1995. As a doctoral student in Systematic Theology working on his dissertation, he finds it difficult to focus on one theme and one theological tradition, explaining why his dissertation is a multi-religious examination on the theme of eternal perdition by putting the thought of Hans Urs Von Balthasar in comparative dialogue with Asanga the Yogacarin. He has taught undergraduate coursework at both the Catholic University of America and Georgetown. He is a co-founder and contributor of the blog, The Well at the World’s End. And if you are curious, his library thing profile is here: www.librarything.com/profile/HornOrSilk . He also has put together an e-book edition of some short stories he has written in his spare time. You can read about it here. A print edition is available as well, as per this post. He also has put together a collection of his essays on the Inklings, as you can read about here (some of them are adaptations of posts on Vox Nova, but others are original to the book itself). A third book, which collects and edits various theological posts from Vox Nova, is also available. A fourth book, looking at animals, can also be ordered.
Kari J. (Lundgren) Tremeryn is a doctoral candidate in Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, where she also received her MA in Rhetoric. She did her undergraduate work in Philosophy at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. Her research focuses on the legitimation of political structures through religious language, with an emphasis on the rhetorical mechanisms of contemporary Catholicism. Kari is co-founder of Religious Rhetorics. In addition, her commentary on contemporary Catholicism and abortion politics was featured on The Huffington Post during the weeks leading up to the 2008 presidential election.
Kelly Wilson, a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Winnipeg, enjoys the poetry of Stevie Smith, the novels of Graham Greene and the works of Lemony Snicket. Of late, he is less eager to identify his admiration for the music of Avril Lavigne, or the films of M. Night Shyamalan, given the eroding quality of their recent work. Besides Vox Nova, he writes from his blog Musings.
Kyle R. Cupp is an independent writing and editing professional. He was born in California, lived many years in Iowa, attended college at Franciscan University in Ohio, and now lives with his wife, son, and daughter in North Texas. He has a BA in English and an MA in Philosophy. His philosophical interests include phenomenology, hermeneutics, and political theory. Kyle enjoys bicycling to work, slaying dragons with his son, playing videogames, and diagramming sentences. He also blogs at Journeys in Alterity. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
Mark DeFrancisis, a regular commenter here at Vox Nova, earned a BA in philosophy from the University of Toronto, St. Michael’s College. He’s done extensive graduate studies in philosophy, English and education at Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, PA. Mark has worked in Catholic education and youth and young adult ministry. He is a classical music junkie (Bach, Mozart, Bruckner and Mahler are among his favorite composers) and die-hard Pittsburgh Pirates fan.
Matt Talbot, a regular commenter at Vox Nova, blogs over at The Hopeful Populist and lives in Berkeley, California. He describes himself as an ordinary sinner who believes “a saint is a sinner who keeps trying.”
Radical Catholic Mom is originally from Idaho, but lives in Alaska and loves it. She graduated from the University of Dallas with a degree in English Literature with a Spanish concentration and an emphasis in Theology. She currently is enrolled in a Master’s of Education program at Wayland Baptist University. Her real learning came during and after college when she volunteered for short term and long term missions throughout the Southern US and Latin America. She is a newly single woman and the momma of three children, one on Earth and two in Heaven.
Sam Rocha was born in Brownsville, Texas and grew up in a Catholic missionary family. He attended Franciscan University of Steubenville as an undergraduate, University of St. Thomas (St. Paul) for an M.A., and received his Ph.D. from the Ohio State University in philosophy of education. He currently works as the Owen Duston visiting assistant professor of philosophy and teacher education at Wabash College. He also coaches the Wabash rugby team, writes and performs music, and loves to fish. His first book, Things and Stuff, is a collection of edited essays first published here. He has just co-authored a chapbook of poetry, Poems by Sam and Sam. For more, you can visit his website: www.samrocha.com
David Cruz-Uribe, SFO is a professor of Mathematics at Trinity College, happily married for 24+ years with three teenage sons. He is a member of the Secular Franciscan Order and an anti-death penalty activist. He frequently described himself to his confessor as a “wretched sinner” since he is a) a sinner, and b) not very good at it. On the American political spectrum and in the Catholic Church he tends to break either left or right, depending. He is interested in the philosophy of Slavoj Zizek, anarchism and the personalism of the Catholic Worker movement.
Tim Muldoon (Ph.D., Catholic Systematic Theology, Duquesne) is a regular witness to the epiphanies of marriage (17+ years) and adoptive fatherhood (of two exquisite women in fieri from China). He clings tenaciously to dreams of athletic glory, living vicariously through his coaching experiences (basketball and rowing) while musing on Homeric and Aristotelian notions of virtue. In his spare time he teaches in the Honors Program at Boston College and writes books (five monographs and two edited, on themes of spirituality, marriage and sex, and the contemporary Catholic Church). His weekly column “Culture at the Crossroads” appears on Tuesdays at Patheos. more
Sofia Loves Wisdom is a woman in need of grace.
Mark Gordon is doing the best he can to be a faithful Catholic Christian.
Julia Smucker is a Mennonite Catholic, or a Mennonite who has come into full communion with the Catholic Church, or a Catholic profoundly and gratefully shaped by her Mennonite heritage – take your pick. She regularly brings the various harmonies and dissonances of this biecclesial identity into her coursework as an MA student concentrating in Systematics at St. John’s School of Theology in Collegeville, Minnesota. She is enthused by finding big-picture connections and relishes her title as the reigning Anti-Dichotomy Queen.
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