TUMCACADEMY.ORG - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Associate Professor of English

Adam Rovner is Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature and the Director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver, where he has taught since 2008. His acclaimed book, In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel, was published by NYU Press (2014). His second book, The Jew Who Would Be King, is forthcoming from UC Press. Adam's academic articles and general interest journalism have appeared in numerous outlets in the US and UK.

Job Titles:

• Associate Professor of the History of Christianity

Albert Hernández is associate professor of the history of Christianity at Iliff School of Theology and Core-Faculty in the Joint PhD Program in Religion with the University of Denver. He teaches and writes about the history of religious traditions and spiritual movements as well as healing and the history of medicine from ancient times through the early modern period. He also specializes in the legacies of the Crusades, Medieval Iberia, and the Spanish Empire. From 2008 to 2017 he served in various administrative roles at Iliff, including senior vice president and faculty dean, interim president/CEO, and co-dean of the Joint PhD Program. His publications include Subversive Fire: The Untold Story of Pentecost (2010), and The Quest for the Historical Satan (2011).

Job Titles:

• Assistant Professor

Dr. Ali will discuss some of the core themes of Islamic mysticism, including the quest for certitude, "sainthood," the unity of being, and whether personal certitude is a sufficient justification for action. He will also present examples of literary and musical expressions of mystical beliefs. Aun Hasan Ali is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at CU Boulder. He received his PhD from McGill University's Institute of Islamic Studies. His research centers on Islamic intellectual history and he is the author of two forthcoming books: The School of Hillah and the Emergence of Twelver Shiism: Social Networks and the Concept of Tradition and Why Hadith Matter: The Evidentiary Value of Hadith in Imami Law (7th/13th to 11th/17th Centuries) (co-authored with Hassan Ansari). His recent publications include: "The Canonization of Nahj al-Balaghah between Hillah and Najaf: al-Sistani and the Iconic Authority of the Maraji," "The Rational Turn in Imamism Revisited," and "Some Notes on the History of the Categorization of Imami Hadith." In addition to intellectual history, Ali maintains an interest in Urdu and Persian literature. Occasionally, he publishes short commentaries on the website Qirtas-o-Qalam (aunhasanali.substack.com).

Job Titles:

• Lecturer

Celene Lillie, Ph.D. is a lecturer at the University of Colorado Boulder and an adjunct professor at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. She lectures nationally, most often with the Jesus Seminar, and is the inaugural Dean of the recently launched Westar Academy. Dr. Lillie is the author of The Rape of Eve: The Transformation of Roman Ideology in Three Early Christian Retellings of Genesis, the director of translations for A New New Testament, edited by Hal Taussig, and a co-author of The Thunder Perfect Mind: A New Translation and Introduction.

Job Titles:

• Professor of Asian

David Robert Loy is a professor of Asian and comparative philosophy (now retired) and a Zen teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. He is a prolific author, whose essays and books have been translated into many languages. David offer workshops and retreats nationally and internationally on various topics, focusing primarily on the encounter between Buddhism and modernity: what each can learn from the other. He is especially concerned about social and ecological issues, and is one of the founders of the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center, near Boulder, Colorado.

Job Titles:

• Assistant Professor of Christianity at University of Denver

In this lecture, Dr. Christy Cobb will discuss the topic of slavery in the Bible and the New Testament, with a focus on the Gospel of Luke. She will introduce the main argument of her book, Slavery, Gender, Truth, and Power in Luke-Acts and Other Ancient Narratives, which is that enslaved women are truth-tellers in Luke and Acts. After providing an overview of the topic, Cobb will offer a feminist interpretation of one enslaved woman who is pictured at the scene where Peter denies Jesus (Luke 22). Cobb argues this enslaved woman functions as a truth-teller in the Gospel of Luke. In her second lecture, Dr. Cobb will continue to focus on enslaved women in the New Testament with a close look at the book of Acts. In Acts 12, a woman named Rhoda is enslaved and working in the house of Mary when she interacts with Peter after he escapes from prison. Cobb argues that Rhoda speaks the truth in this brief scene in Acts. Further, an unnamed enslaved woman is mentioned in Acts 16 when Paul is in Philippi. Cobb reads this story through a feminist lens and argues this woman, too, is a truthteller. Christy Cobb is Assistant Professor of Christianity at University of Denver. The author of Slavery, Gender, Truth, and Power in Luke-Acts and Other Ancient Narratives (2019), Cobb is also on the editorial board of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Recently, Cobb co-edited a volume entitled Sex, Violence, and Early Christian Texts (2022). Her research focuses on topics including Slavery, Gender/Sexuality, Ancient Fiction (Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian), the Gospels, and Acts of the Apostles. When not reading or writing about ancient texts, Cobb enjoys reading novels, gardening, hiking, and playing with her 7-year-old son, Owen.

Ethan Sanders was born and raised in Denver, Colorado and received his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2013. He is an associate professor of history at Regis University and is a scholar of global intellectual history with a focus on East Africa. He has published on topics such as the Zanzibar Revolution and the Cold War, African political thinkers, missionaries and empire in Africa, and Christian-Muslim relations in East Africa. He is working on two book projects, the first is "Building the African Nation: The African Association and Pan-Africanism in East Africa," under contract with Cambridge University Press, and the second is a religious and intellectual biography of Julius Nyerere.

Rev. Kama Hamilton Morton is an elder in the Mountain Sky Conference. She has pastored churches throughout Montana and south Denver. She as District Superintendent of Montana. Kama serves as a Hospice Chaplain. She has utilized Taizé since the late 90's and had the opportunity to spend part of a day in Taizé, France in 2008.

Kelly Fayard, Ph.D., is a citizen of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians and hails from LA (the other LA-lower Alabama). She holds a BA in cultural anthropology and religion from Duke University, and an MA, Ph.D., and certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Michigan. She joined the University of Denver in 2019 in the department of anthropology as an assistant professor. Before her current position, she was assistant dean of Yale College and Director of the Native American Cultural Center at Yale University. Prior to that, she held a position as assistant professor of anthropology in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Bowdoin College. She held the Anne Ray fellowship at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, NM in 2014-2015.

Job Titles:

• Professor of Religion at Regis University

Tom Howe is Professor of Religion at Regis University. His research interests revolve around issues of aesthetics and philosophy of religion. He is the author of Faithful to the Earth: Nietzsche and Whitehead on God and the Meaning of Human Life and several essays on process thought, religion and literature, aesthetics, and atheism. He studied at Lake Forest College, Yale University, and Claremont Graduate University