Section Editors
in alphabetical order
Abigail Gillman, Boston University, United States. Editor: Judaism and Literature.
Abigail Gillman (Ph.D, Harvard University) is a Professor of Hebrew, German, and Comparative Literature, with a research focus on Jewish literature and culture of the German-speaking world. She is the author of Viennese Jewish Modernism: Freud, Hofmannsthal, Beer-Hofmann, and Schnitzler (Penn State Press, 2009) and A History of German Jewish Bible Translation (University of Chicago Press, 2018). She has recently won the Egon Schwarz Prize for an Outstanding Essay in the Area of German Jewish Studies. In 2016-2017, she served as interim director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies.
David Jasper, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom. Editor: Theology section.
David Jasper (Ph.D, Durham University; Doctor of Divinity, Oxford University) is the author of numerous books, including Literature and Theology as a Grammar of Assent (Ashgate, 2016); The Sacred Community (Baylor University Press, 2012); The Study of Literature and Religion: An Introduction (Macmillan, 1989); and The New Testament and the Literary Imagination (Macmillan, 1987). Edited volumes include A Poetics of Translation, with Geng Youzhuang and Wang Hai (Baylor, 2016); The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology, with Andrew W. Hass and Elisabeth Jay (Oxford, 2007); and The Bible and Literature: A Reader (Blackwell’s, 1999). He is the past Senior Editor of the journal Literature and Theology and the founder of an ongoing series of international conferences in religion and literature which began in Durham in 1982.
Boutheina Khaldi, American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Editor: Islam and Literature.
Boutheina Kaldi is Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the American University of Sharjah (Ph.D., Indiana University, Bloomington). She is the author of Egypt Awakening in the Early Twentieth Century: Mayy Ziyadah’s Intellectual Circles (2012) and Al-Muḍmar fῑ al-Tarassul al-Niswῑ al-‘Arabῑ (The Implicit in Arab Women’s Epistolary Writing, long-listed for Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Young Authors, 2015). She is also the co-editor of Al-Adab al-‘Arabῑ al-Ḥadῑth: Mukhtᾱrᾱt (2010), Al-Wᾱfῑ fῑ Turᾱth al-‘Arab al-Thaqᾱfῑ (2010), and Turᾱth al-‘Arab al-Ma‘rifῑ (2010). Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Arabic Literature. Her novel “Ikhtibāl” (2019) was nominated for the Arabic Booker.
Sharon Kim, Taylor University, United States. General Editor; project initiator.
Sharon Kim (Ph.D, Yale University) specializes in late 19th- to early 20th-century American literature, with particular interest in Christian faith and spirituality in literature. She is the author of Literary Epiphany in the Novel, 1850-1950: Constellations of the Soul (2012), winner of the 2013 Book of the Year award from the Conference on Christianity and Literature. She has also won the 2019 Lionel Basney award for outstanding journal essay in Christianity and Literature. She serves on the advisory board of the American Religion and Literature Society.
Lee Oser, College of the Holy Cross, United States. Editor: Shakespeare and Religion.
Lee Oser (Ph.D, Yale University) is Professor of English Literature at College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts. He is the author most recently of Christian Humanism in Shakespeare: A Study in Religion and Literature (Catholic University of America Press, 2022), in addition to The Ethics of Modernism: Moral Ideas in Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, and Beckett (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and T. S. Eliot and American Poetry (University of Missouri Press, 1998). He is also a publishing poet and novelist.
Rosa E.M.D. Penna, Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. Editor: South America and Spain (forthcoming).
Rosa Penna (Ph.D., Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina) is Professor Emerita of English Literature and Language and Comparative Literature. She has served as Directora del Instituto de Literatura Inglesa y Norteamericana and as Distinguished Senior Bibliographer for the MLA International Bibliography.
Asha Sen, University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire. Editor: Postcolonial Literature.
Asha Sen (Ph.D., Purdue University) is a professor of postcolonial literature and theory in the department of English at the University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire. She is the author of Postcolonial Yearning: Reshaping Spiritual and Secular Discourses in Contemporary Literature (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) and is currently at work on a book on postcolonial women authors and spirituality. From 2013 to 2016, she was the director of her university’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) program.
Terrence Wandtke, Rock Valley College, IL, United States. Section Editor: Graphic Novels–Comic Books: Superheroes.
Terrence Wandtke (PH.D., Saint Louis University) is the author of several monographs, including The Comics Scare Returns: The Resurgence in Contemporary Horror Comics (RIT), and the editor of several collections, including Robert Kirkman: Conversations (UP of Mississippi). His research interests focus on popular media as an intersection of artistic, corporate, and fan cultures. He has served as the area chair of Comics and Comic Art for the Popular Culture Association Conference and currently acts as the editor of the Comics Monograph Series for the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Other Contributors
The Literature and Religion website includes suggestions for the Bibliography, section categories, and links from the following scholars, in alphabetical order:
Lori Branch, University of Iowa
Kathy Chow, Yale University
Christopher Douglas, University of Victoria
Matthew Green, Azusa Pacific University
Aaron Griffith, Whitworth University
Curtis Gruenler, Hope College
Kevin Hart, University of Virginia
Ray Horton, Murray State University
Romana Huk, University of Notre Dame
Mihee Kim-Kort, Indiana University
Mark Knight, Lancaster University
Lucas Emile Kwong, City University of New York
Hans Leaman, Sattler College
Tat-siong Benny Lew, College of the Holy Cross
JanJan Lin, Yale University
Thomas Martin, Wheaton College
Nina Nesher, Jewish Theological Seminary
Leah Silvieus, Independent Scholar
Margaret A. Toth, Manhattan College
Alana Vincent, University of Chester
Cynthia Wallace, University of Saskatchewan
Patricia A. Ward, Vanderbilt University
Matthew Wickman, Brigham Young University
Cathy Zhang Jing, Renmin University of China
New editors and contributors are welcome. For more information, please contact Sharon Kim at sharon_kim1@taylor.edu.
Literature and Religion 