This seminar is functioning under the direction of the Mormon Theology Seminar.
The Mormon Theology Seminar is an independent, scholarly forum committed to organizing short-term, seminar-style collaborations that consider specific questions about Mormon theology through close readings of foundational Mormon texts. As a part of this work, the Seminar also publicly archives the findings of these study groups.
The Seminar’s primary aim is to create a common space where theological work can be undertaken in a way that is both concentrated and collaborative.
Seminar Participants
Robert Couch: Robert is an assistant professor of finance at Brigham Young University where he teaches corporate finance and does research in asset pricing anomalies, illiquid investments, corporate governance, and business ethics. Robert is also interested cultural, theological, and philosophical critiques of business in practice, teaching and scholarship—to that end, he has presented papers at conferences held by Mormon Scholars in the Humanities and the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology, and sits on the board of the Mormon Theology Seminar.
Russell Arben Fox: Russell lives with his wife Melissa, and his four daughters (Megan, Caitlyn, Alison, and Kristen) in Wichita, KS, where he is an associate professor of political science and the director of the political science program at Friends University, a small, non-denominational Christian liberal arts college. He received his BA in political science and his MA in international studies from Brigham Young University, and his PhD in political philosophy from Catholic University of America. He was born in Spokane, WA in 1968, and has lived and taught in Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Illinois, and Germany, in addition to his present home in Kansas. Articles of his have been published in The Review of Politics, Polity, American Behavioral Scientist, and Philosophy East and West; he has also published book chapters on comparative and contemporary political theory. Besides teaching, he has worked as a bookseller, a dishwasher, a newspaper reporter and a ranch-hand. He is, along with Melissa, currently the book review editor for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.
Kristine Haglund: Kristine is editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Her academic background is in German Studies, and she holds degrees from Harvard and the University of Michigan. Her current research interests include women’s and children’s history, particularly religious pedagogy in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th-century. She expects to return to graduate school upon completion of her current major pedagogical project–the civilizing of her three children, with whom she lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.
Jeremiah John: Jeremiah is Assistant Professor of Politics at Southern Virginia University, where he has served as the coordinator of the politics program since fall 2007. He received his MA (2004) and PhD (2008) in political theory and comparative politics from the University of Notre Dame. Among his current research interests are classical German political philosophy, Christian political theology, and political ethics. He has presented papers on Mormonism and political theology at the Southern Political Science Association and Mormon Scholars in the Humanities annual meetings and has organized conference panels on Mormonism and politics and on Luther’s political theology. Jeremiah lives in Buena Vista, Virginia with his wife Stephanie and their three children.
Nathan B. Oman: Nathan is an assistant professor at The College of William & Mary’s Marshall-Wythe School of Law and will be a visiting professor of law at Cornell Law School in Spring, 2010. A graduate of Brigham Young University, where he was a Presidential Scholar, Oman has a BA in political science with minors in philosophy and Korean. After graduation he worked as a Senate staffer on Capitol Hill and went on to receive his JD, cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was on the Articles Committee of the Harvard Law Review, in addition to being an editor for the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Morris Shepard Arnold on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and practiced law for a time in Washington, D.C. His scholarly work has focused on the philosophy of private law, with an emphasis on contracts, and the history of law and religion, with an emphasis on Mormonism. He has been published in the Harvard Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and other scholarly fora. In addition, he has published articles on Mormonism in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the FARMS Review, BYU Studies, and Element: The Journal of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology. He lives in Williamsburg, Virginia with his wife and two children.
Joseph M. Spencer: Joseph received a BA in philosophy from Brigham Young University, is in the last stages of finishing a masters in library science at San Jose State University, and will return to graduate work in philosophy in 2010. He is the co-founder (with Robert Couch) of LDS-HERM, an e-mail list dedicated to discussions of philosophy and scripture, and he currently sits on the executive board of the Mormon Theology Seminar. During the summer of 2009, he studied the thought of Parley and Orson Pratt as a summer seminar fellow under Terryl Givens and Matthew Grow at Brigham Young University. He has presented papers at conferences hosted by various organizations, and is the author of several papers soon to be published. Joseph lives with his wife, Karen, and his three children in Salem, Oregon, where he teaches early morning seminary.
Karen Spencer: Karen is a mother of three who has been living in Salem, Oregon, while her husband Joseph Spencer completes a masters degree. Karen graduated from BYU in 2003 with a bachelors in Humanities, with her emphasis in English literature. Since marrying Joe she has studied a great deal of theology and philosophy and has found it surprisingly fascinating. She has been won over by Jacques Ranciere’s book on teaching, and now claims Beehives are potentially the best students in the church. In her spare time Karen enjoys American house designs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
