The Oxford Theologian Oxford University Theology & Religion Faculty Magazine
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THE OXFORD THEOLOGIAN OXFORD UNIVERSITY THEOLOGY & RELIGION FACULTY MAGAZINE ISSUE 6 . SUMMER 2017 OXFORD UNIVERSITY THEOLOGY THE OXFORD & RELIGION FACULTY MAGAZINE THEOLOGIAN ISSUE 6 . SUMMER 2017 CONTENTS A MESSAGE FROM THE FACULTY BOARD CHAIR 1 Johannes Zachhuber IN MEMORIAM 2 Pamela Sue Anderson INCREASING SUPPORT FOR POSTGRADUATES 4 Anna Sapir Abulafia MEET OUR POSTGRADUATES 6 Alex Bruce, Kylie Crabbe, Daniel Herskowitz, Anik Laferrière, Elizabeth Li, Tim Middleton, Mari Ovsepyan, Zachary Purvis, Managing editor: Donovan Schaefer Laura Quick, Tikhon Vasilyev Deputy editors: Olga Puzanova and Marek Sullivan SHARI‘A COURTS: Exploring Law and Ethics in 13 Design and production: Andrew Esson, Contemporary Islam Baseline Arts Justin Jones Profound thanks to: All the staff in the Faculty Office COMPASSION IN HEALTH CARE: Practical Policy for Civic Life 16 Joshua Hordern STAY IN TOUCH! We are always eager to hear from you! Please THE OXFORD–BONN FACULTY EXCHANGE 19 keep in touch with the Faculty at general. Mark Chapman [email protected]. If you have news items for the Alumni News section in future issues of the Theologian, you can let COMINGS AND GOINGS 20 us know about them on our dedicated email address, [email protected]. We also recommend that all alumni consider STUDENT PRIZES 24 opening an online account with the University of Oxford Alumni Office: www.alumni.ox.ac.uk. FACULTY NEWS 25 KEEP UP WITH THE FACULTY ONLINE! www.facebook.com/oxfordtheologyfaculty/ FACULTY BOOKS 26 www.theology.ox.ac.uk www.instagram.com/faculty_theology_ religion/ OXFORD THEOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS 2016 IBC FROM THE FACULTY BOARD CHAIR PROFESSOR JOHANNES ZACHHUBER I am writing to you at the end of another busy as well as and Religion. They all now teach their students through a mix of successful year at the Faculty of Theology and Religion. With individual supervision, class teaching, and research seminars. In the arrival of Jenn Strawbridge, our new Associate Professor 2016/17, we admitted over eighty students into these programmes— of New Testament Studies, all the Faculty’s permanent posts considerably more than we do for our undergraduate degrees. have been filled. Our institutional memory doesn’t stretch to the last time this has been the case though, given the Then there are the doctoral students. Their exciting and diverse longevity of this Faculty, there must surely be a precedent. projects make an important contribution to the Faculty’s research Be this as it may, we are firing on all cylinders, as it were, and culture. We have worked hard in recent years to ensure research consequently we get a lot of work done. students benefit as much as possible from the Faculty’s resources. But we have also sought to find ways in which their intellectual work The major innovation this year was the rollout of the new can feed into conversations that are happening elsewhere in the undergraduate syllabus. Those of you who saw last year’s issue may Faculty. While writing a doctorate is often a solitary affair, we have recall the magnitude of this curricular revision. First-year students taken steps towards a community of research students, and we seek have now had a chance to study the newly designed papers on the to connect this community with the other groups in the Faculty. Introduction to the Study of the Bible; Jesus through the Centuries; and Religion and Religions. Perhaps the best testimony to the We are extremely proud of our graduate students. They are an attraction of the new course are envious comments from second and outstanding group of promising young academics from all over third-year students who wish they would have had the same options the world and from a wide variety of religious, cultural, and social when they started! backgrounds. As you read through this issue, you will encounter some of them, find out about their projects and ideas, but also While we are broadening the range of topics offered to about their lives’ trajectories that have brought them to come and undergraduates, we double down on our traditional strengths. The study at Oxford. new three-term prelims course allows for more language instruction in the first year, and we are confident that this will have a knock-on The present issue of Oxford Theologian will give you a few effect on second- and third-year teaching as well. On that topic, we impressions of what has been happening around here. But there’s of are delighted that we will soon welcome an instructor in Biblical course much more that could be of interest depending on who you Hebrew, a new post we share with the Faculty of Oriental Studies. are and what your connections are with this Faculty. If, therefore, you This is one of several new positions we have been able to create this have questions, comments or any other kind of feedback, do get in year in areas as diverse as Modern Theology, Hinduism, and Science touch with us. We’ll be happy to hear from you. and Religion. On a personal note, this is the last time I will write this editorial. In a Along with undergraduate education, graduate study has played an few weeks’ time, I will be passing on the baton as Faculty Board Chair increasing role in the Faculty’s life in recent years. In fact, it is a major to Graham Ward, our Regius Professor of Divinity. These last three success story. Application numbers have been increasing for years. years have been exciting and eventful, but I am now looking forward We offer Master’s courses in all major areas of Christian theology to some uninterrupted research time for work on my next book. n as well as the Study of Religions. Some of them reflect unique research strengths in the Faculty, such as the Master of Studies Professor Johannes Zachhuber in Philosophical Theology and the Master of Studies in Science Chair of the Faculty Board THE OXFORD THEOLOGIAN { 1 IN MEMORIAM PAMELA SUE ANDERSON Professor of Modern European Philosophy of Religion by Paul S. Fiddes and Adrian Moore In March this year members of two Faculties, Theology and Religion, and Philosophy, were greatly saddened to lose a valued and respected colleague. Pamela Sue Anderson died after living with cancer for two years. She held the University title of Professor of Modern European Philosophy of Religion and had been Fellow in Philosophy of Religion at Regent’s Park College since 2001. In 2009 she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lund in recognition of her pioneering work in feminist philosophy of religion, a field that she practically invented, which is now widely accepted as making a distinctive contribution to philosophy, and in which she had an international reputation. This bare statement of her position in religion. Many research students will testify Pamela was born in Minnesota and, after Oxford does not, of course, indicate the to the conscientious way that she read their undergraduate and postgraduate work in huge affection in which she was held by her work, commented on it, and challenged the USA, joined Mansfield College, Oxford, in students, on whom she lavished time and their easy assumptions. While she gave this 1979. There she took two research degrees, care, far beyond the strict requirements of attention to female and male students alike, first an MLitt in Philosophical Theology in her job. It was a regular occurrence for her she was particularly good at supporting the Faculty of Theology, and then a DPhil undergraduate students to achieve their and championing younger women in the in Philosophy of Religion in the Faculty of highest marks in the papers she taught, profession, both in Oxford and beyond Philosophy, on ‘Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophy largely because she generated enthusiasm in its borders through her work with the UK of the Will’. At that time it was very unusual them for the subject, especially in Christian Society for Women in Philosophy. for a philosopher in Oxford to work on a ethics, moral philosophy, and philosophy of continental figure such as Ricoeur, but it 2 } THE OXFORD THEOLOGIAN philosophy of ‘the other’ in new directions. At the same time she wanted relations of Her own work ranged widely. She was keen to detect love and forgiveness to have a central place in philosophy, and was critical of modes of gender biases, and was intensely committed to freeing teaching and learning that relied on conflict women from social restraints so that they could flourish and point-scoring against others. In her latest work she was exploring the idea of vulnerability, intellectually and personally. especially as manifested in profoundly transformative experiences such as facing critical illness or coping with bereavement. Poignantly, given her state of health, she was typical of Pamela to buck the trend Her own work ranged widely. She was was arguing for a positive reappraisal of in this way, while later she showed that keen to detect gender biases, and was vulnerability, urging that it be seen, not just as she could be just as much at home in the intensely committed to freeing women an admission of suffering, disempowerment, ‘analytical’ philosophy with which Oxford from social restraints so that they could and death, but also as ‘an openness to mutual has more traditionally been associated. A flourish intellectually and personally. affection’ and as ‘a provocation for enhancing version of her doctoral thesis was published In this she remained indebted to Kant’s life’. In this way, as she had always done, she as her first book Ricoeur and Kant (1993). vision of autonomy while taking Ricoeur’s lived her own philosophy.