Teaching

United Lutheran Seminary #

HT 930 - Digital Humanities #

Fall 2026

HT 930 introduces students to the field, methods, and ethical debates of digital humanities (DH) and continually asks how those methods serve public theology and public scholarship more broadly. Students will define DH and trace its central debates; evaluate existing DH projects for their relevance to theological and ministerial contexts; build hands-on competence with tools for text analysis, mapping, network analysis, audio, video, and web publishing; and design, produce, and present an original, public-facing digital project grounded in humanistic inquiry. Throughout, the course treats congregations, seminaries, and denominational bodies as communities of memory and public witness whose stories, records, and voices raise the same questions of access, representation, and care that animate the wider DH field. Students leave the course with a public portfolio website, a body of practical digital skills, and a vocational framework for integrating DH methods into ministry, teaching, and research.

Independent Study - The Prophetic Pragmatic Tradition: Race, Religion, and Rhetoric in American Thought #

Fall 2026

This independent study examines the development of American pragmatism through Black intellectual, theological, and literary traditions. Centering the work of James Baldwin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Hortense Spillers, and Cornel West as primary interlocutors, the course explores how racialized experience reshapes pragmatism into a prophetic, critical, and publicly engaged mode of inquiry. Particular attention is given to how these thinkers reconfigure pragmatism’s central concerns—truth, experience, and democracy—through the lenses of race, religion, and rhetoric. As such, the course is especially relevant for public theology, engaging the complex relationship between religious life, racial formation, and democratic practice within one of the most influential philosophical and theological traditions in the United States.

HT 933 - Teaching World Religions #

Spring 2026

This doctoral-level seminar prepares students to teach world religions in secondary, undergraduate, and seminary contexts. The course treats the world religions paradigm as a historical and pedagogical construct shaped by classification, power, and discourse. Students analyze major theoretical debates, evaluate pedagogical models, and design teaching materials grounded in critical religious studies. The course culminates in a professional teaching portfolio suitable for academic and educational settings. The course is designed to meet expectations for teaching preparation for teaching World Religions. It incorporates the best practices recommended by the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR).

ST 727 / ST 927 - Postcolonial and Decolonial Theologies #

Spring 2026

Postcolonial and Decolonial Theologies critically interrogates the colonial legacy embedded within Christian theological discourse and the structures of theological education. Beginning with Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s landmark essay, Decolonization is Not a Metaphor, the course examines how settler colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism have shaped theological knowledge and ecclesial practices. Students will engage diverse global voices from Latin American liberation theology, African decolonial critiques, Indigenous epistemologies, and feminist/womanist theologies to examine how faith can resist domination and center subjugated knowledge. Emphasis will be placed on understanding the incommensurability of decolonization with social justice reform, the implications of land-based sovereignty, and the theological imperative to reckon with complicity in settler systems. The course invites students to imagine theology not as abstract system-building but as embodied, place-based, and responsive to the cries of colonized peoples and the land itself.

ST 720 / ST 920 - Indigenous Religions and Spirituality #

Fall 2025

This seminar introduces students to the histories, worldviews, and religious practices of Native and Indigenous peoples across North and Central America. Through scholarly texts, primary sources, oral traditions, and guest voices from Indigenous communities, students will explore religion as lived in Indigenous contexts—through ritual, art, storytelling, and land-based knowledge. The course gives special attention to settler colonialism, religious syncretism, environmental justice, and Indigenous critiques of academic study. Students will engage public-facing scholarship and produce a final podcast project that demonstrates their grasp of Indigenous traditions and their public theological implications.

HTH 930 - Public & Digital Humanities for Public Theology #

Spring 2025

In this seminar we will explore public humanities and digital humanities approaches to public theology. This course will be a hands-on, practice-oriented course where students will receive mentorship and guidance as they begin the work of public and digital humanities. Students will learn the methods and tools for conducting digital research and how to communicate public theology to the public through digital media. In this course students will be introduced to a number of digital tools and methods of public engagement. We will explore blogging, podcasting, story maps, infographics, website building, and digital archival research. After taking this course students will have demonstrable and transferable skills such as blogging, podcasting, archival research, paleography, cataloging, and crafting a public humanities and digital humanities ethics statement. All these skills will be highlighted in their public humanities portfolio.