BA, Kent State University, 2015, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

This thesis discusses what it meant to become a Christian in first century Roman Corinth for Corinthians from Jewish, Roman, Greek, or Egyptian religious backgrounds. Because the first generation of Christian converts came directly from other religious constructs, these religious constructs were strongly influential in the development of early Christianity in Corinth. Evidence for this influence can be seen in the Apostle Paul's letters to the Corinthians, where the presence of argumentation indicates that some of the Christians disagreed with Paul on various topics, many of which were related to contemporary Corinthian religious practices. As the early Christians distinguished themselves from the Diaspora Jewish communities in which they originated and actively pursued Gentile converts, the fusion of believers with differing religious backgrounds caused uncertainty and conflict over acceptable beliefs and practices within Christian communities, such as the need for Jewish rites of circumcision and dietary restrictions or the freedom of believers to continue interacting with idols. By discussing Paul's Corinthian letters alongside other ancient sources and archaeological evidence, this thesis shows how the religious diversity in first century Corinth influenced the Christian community, demonstrating that Christianity was not formed in a vacuum but in conversation with contemporary religious constructs.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2024, History

One Nation Under My God studies the issue of Christian Nationalism through the institutional histories and political activism of the United Methodist Church and the Southern Baptist Convention. By looking at these histories, this work argues that Christian Nationalism is not always overt but can be subtle and quiet. The overt support for pro-America ideology from the Southern Baptists and the subtler moralism from United Methodists contrast in these ways. This study also discusses regional identity between North and South in the United States and how religious and political affiliation perpetuates regional division.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, History

“The Virgin Mary in Ritual in Late Antique Egypt: Origins, Practice, and Legacy” examines the significance of the Virgin Mary for the ritual activities of Christians in Egypt, from the early conceptual roots of Marian veneration in the second century, to its diffusion among the monks of Egypt ca. 500 CE. In addition to patristics and the New Testament, this project emphasizes esoteric treatises, apocryphal stories, and ritual devices, and considers writings predominantly in Coptic, Greek, Syriac, and Latin. The dissertation challenges longstanding views that make the cult of Mary either a reflex of pagan goddess worship or a response to Christological controversy—above all, the “heresy” of docetism (i.e., the belief that Jesus' humanity and/or suffering were merely apparent). In contrast, the dissertations argues that the earliest association of Mary with divine powers was inspired by mythologies related to “heterodox” Christians—such as Valentinians, Gnostics, and Manichaeans—who variously linked Mary to spiritual powers like the primordial church, the Holy Spirit, the Virgin of Light, and the Mother of Life. These developments in doctrine and praxis reflect distinct forms of social and ritual authority among the Christians of late antiquity, who expressed competing notions of ecclesiastical and anthropological harmony, and visionary experiences. The history of Mary's ritual authority, and Christianity more generally, must always account for the contributions of so-called “heterodox” Christians even in the most unlikely ways, not within some fleeting period of early diversity, but as part of a continuous process well into the Middle Ages.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1957, Graduate School

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2009, Theatre and Film

In her edited volume "Plays for the End of the Century," Bonnie Marranca argues that “some of the most thoughtful plays written today join poetic language to a new spiritual energy that addresses metaphysical questions, the crisis of spirit, and theological concepts such as sin, redemption, evil, and grace“ formulated within an iconography of saints, angels, heaven, and hell” (xii). This project explores this issue, and demonstrates how playwrights dialogue with Christianity and culture in meaningful ways. The plays considered, which were not written for specifically Christian audiences, are Anne Chislett's Quiet in the Land (1983), David Rambo's God's Man in Texas (1998), Djanet Sears's The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God (2003), Arlene Hutton's As It Is In Heaven (2003), Craig Wright's Grace (2005), and Mark St. Germain's A Plague of Angels (2006). In examining Christianity in the contemporary moment, consideration is given to how these playscripts function in a culture where the modern and the postmodern are understood as conditions of knowledge, referencing Linda Hutcheon and Jean-Francois Lyotard. Combining biblical interpretation with script analysis and cultural criticism, connections between Christianity and theatre are explored, applying the theories of Philip Yancey, Robert Webber, and Brian McLaren, among others, to investigate a “new essentialism” in the contemporary cultural moment. The study also considers how the characters in these plays work to create, sustain, or consume culture, as well as if and how they engage in any type of “culture war.” Additionally, this study explores how these plays portray representatives of Christian faith as they experience moments of crisis, investigating the notion of doubt and its interconnectedness with faith. These considerations reveal connections between the plays and contemporary understandings and expressions of Christianity, investigating how the lives of the characters are religious, and how thes (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2008, Graduate School

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2024, Classics

This work explores current scholarship on Christianity's role in shaping hierarchy, race, and science. Myth is used as a way of understanding how oppressive structures took root within the West, and helped create the concept of "the West." Finally, mermaids are introduced as a new figure of study within religion and the humanities. Mermaids, as they appear within the Christian West, reveal how the body is tied to humanity, and thus exemplify Christianity's role in creating race within the Western imagination.

MA, Kent State University, 2024, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

My thesis discusses the history of gender and sexuality politics in postcolonial Zimbabwe. It utilizes the convening of Christianity and politics to explore how these areas of public life combined to influence different perceptions towards gender and sexuality identities. The background appraises the impact of African Traditional Religion (ATR) during the colonial period and the changes ushered in by Western Christianity. During this time of colonial conquest, ATR was the cornerstone of all the sectors of life including politics. This included the worshiping of God through nature and ancestral spirits. Reincarnation was a very prominent practice of the colonial Zimbabwe ATR, also known as the Mwari cult. The concept of reincarnation was considered an effective way of communicating with the dead through the Masvikiro (spirit mediums) who transmitted information, requests for rains, or prayers for healing and harvest to Mwari or Unkulunkulu (God). Masvikiro gained popularity as the quest for nationalism continuously shaped every aspect of colonial Zimbabwe especially in the anti-colonial protest of 1896-97 Chimurenga (war of independence). Although there was transition in religion since the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial period where ATR's prominence began to diminish due to the absorption of western doctrines, all the three historic phases elaborate how religion was shaped by the prevailing situations until it became a chief cornerstone of every aspect of the postcolonial economy. As a result of colonialism, a significant number of people converted to Christianity. My thesis, therefore, serves to confirm the existence of a continued influence of religion in politics. It reexamines the various ways in which a combination of religion and politics affected the perceptions of gender and sexuality identities. This pinpoints dimensions in which gender identities were understood and perceived in independent Zimbabwe and most significantly how these changed through (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2024, History (Arts and Sciences)

This thesis essays to study and interpret a small body of poems from Southern Gaul which respond to the breach of the Rhine frontier and subsequent crises from 406-418 AD. After demonstrating contemporary literary conventions in both secular and Christian discourses, the paper will survey how the poems in question came to terms with recent catastrophe and thereby rearticulated differing ideas of empire and meta-history which drew upon the Latin Epic tradition but deployed them in a context that was increasingly Christian and destabilized. While this will shed limited light on the political events, it will primarily serve to situate the beginnings of the Fall of the Western Empire in their intellectual context and indicate how they served as agents of the transformation of the Classical World and the draining of the secular.

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2024, Art History (Fine Arts)

This thesis examines the cultural and religious contexts behind the production of the Girona Apocalypse [Museu de la Catedral de Girona, Num. Inv. 7(11)], a tenth-century copy of Beatus of Liebana's eighth-century Commentary on the Apocalypse. It delves into the ways in which medieval society, guided by the gendered perceptions of the Latin Church, played a pivotal role in categorizing women within a binary framework: either as pure or immoral. The focus is on the portrayal of femininity in the Apocalypse of St. John, where the contrasting figures of the Great Harlot and the Woman Clothed with the Sun are juxtaposed, and how this imagery and symbolism are transformed into feminine archetypes in the Girona manuscript, resulting in a pictorial conflict and shedding light on the nuanced dynamics of gender in medieval Iberia. The Girona Apocalypse was created at the dual monastery at San Salvador de Tabara, and apparently was illuminated by a woman, Ende. Her contribution provides a subtle layer to the understanding of womanhood in medieval Iberia, highlighting the importance of the role she played in a society where women received limited validation and recognition. The Girona Beatus not only offers a unique perspective on the conception of womanhood in the Middle Ages, but also provides valuable insights into how a woman artisan painter navigated her identity within the constraints of a malecentric Christian narrative.

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2023, History

Women in modern Nigeria have been subjected to decades of gender discrimination manifesting in societal gender oppression and institutional prejudice. Women trail behind men in education, financial power, and political representation. Religious reformation and British colonialism have proven to have had a significant role in the uprooting of Indigenous customs in specific northern and southern regions of Nigeria. This project interrogates the factors of religious change and colonialism upon the internal valuation of womanhood of Hausa women in a Muslim society and Igbo women in an increasingly Christian region. The Colonial Womanist Devaluation model is used to identify the changing internal definitions of womanhood of Hausa and Igbo women against the external factors of religious change and colonialism. Through the application of this model, it was revealed that the slow process of Islamization within Hausa communities primed Hausa women to commonly accept the restrictions of an increasingly patriarchal society. In contrast, Igbo women more commonly resisted the patriarchal norms brought by Christian conversion and colonialism due to the perseverance of Indigenous Igbo culture. The findings of the Colonial Womanist Devaluation Model have proven consistent in the interrogation of the behaviors and internal valuations of womanhood in modern Hausa and Igbo women.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2023, English (Arts and Sciences)

This study documents patterns of description of Roman Catholic characters, beliefs, cultural attitudes, dispositions, doctrines, worship and ceremonial rites, and visual and material culture in eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century British prose fiction. From Daniel Defoe's Religious Courtship (1722) to Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (1814), British prose fiction wrestles with the problem of religious difference between Anglo-Protestants and a defamiliarized Catholic other. Delineating Roman Catholicism the spatial-geographical as well as timebound “constitutive outside” of Protestant Great Britain, numerous British novels portray Catholics and Catholic religion as shadows of a dark age past from which Britain itself has emerged, enlightened and whole. And yet certain features of these fictions belie a clean, easy separation and indeed problematize Anglo-Protestant identity itself. Describing in fetishistic detail Catholicism's visual and material culture, to emphasize its strangeness and outlandishness to British observers, British writers draw attention to Protestant Britain's own lack of internal religious unity and coherence, which is often symbolized by the novel's inability to render a rival Protestant religious imaginary on the page. I argue that the stark contrast between the visible and embodied evidence of Roman Catholic religion and an Anglo-Protestant religious imaginary that both contains and resists Catholic art and artifice, is a constant source of unspoken disquiet and tension in the British novel. British writers of the eighteenth-century wrestle with the question or what Britons have lost or gained in shedding the visual and material culture of Catholicism for comparatively immaterial and rational constructions of faith. In consequence, however, a Catholic religious imaginary and sacramental universe—part of England's religious heritage from the Catholic Middle Ages—is preserved in the realm of the symbolic, and becomes a challenge to b (open full item for complete abstract)

MA, Kent State University, 2023, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

This paper offers a comparison of early Christian and Roman accounts of paradise, decline, and restoration, focusing on writings of the first centuries B.C.E. and C.E. As Christianity arose as a sect within Judaism, my analysis will also include Jewish texts, many of which were written before the first century B.C.E., but which continued to be very influential during the period on which I am focusing. My comparison will be focused on the cultural values that are reflected in such discourses as utopian and eschatological accounts have a lot to tell us about the ideals of their authors. In particular, I will be analyzing the values presented in Christian texts in light of the Roman virtues of virtus, self-restraint, and pietas, as well as Roman views of social hierarchy. In doing so, I hope to highlight not only the similarities between Judeo-Christian and Roman accounts, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the differences. While the Roman writings that I will discuss almost invariably present a view from the “center” of imperial power, the Jewish and Christian writings, at least to a large extent, originate at the “periphery.” This difference, as we will see, has a significant effect on the values of each group, despite superficial similarities.

PHD, Kent State University, 2023, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

The religious content of nineteenth-century American sentimental texts is often overlooked as a subject of study itself and is instead analyzed as a means to another end, such as its contributions to the abolition of slavery or to women's rights. Both are powerful uses of religion in writing; by contrast, this dissertation analyzes the use of religion in nineteenth-century American sentimental texts as an active and evolving blueprint by which to live everyday life. Utilizing the sociological/historical theory of ‘lived religion' and emphasizing the literary mode of ‘surface reading,' I explore how women writers of sentimental texts—Jarena Lee, Julia Foote, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Susan Warner, Louisa May Alcott, and Frances E. W. Harper—implemented religious themes and lessons in their sermons, essays, speeches, novels, and poetry in serving the purpose of faith itself. The analysis of lived religion focuses on how these women and their personal theology and religious practices interacted and evolved, which they then taught to society through their writing and speaking.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), University of Dayton, 2023, Theology

This dissertation is a contextualized and hermeneutical study of the relationship between dialogue and proclamation through the work of John C. H. Wu. Dialogue refers to the intercultural and interreligious dialogue between Christians and members of other faiths. Proclamation refers to the explicit proclamation of the Gospel of Christ among the nations. It begins by placing Wu back into his historical context in Chinese modernity from the 1840s to 1949. He is described as a humanist who takes a different approach than liberals and Communists to the relationship between China's past traditions and modernity, between China and the West. Wu's participation in dialogue is explored through his cosmopolitan journal, T'ien Hsia Monthly, and his explicit writings relating Christianity to the traditions of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. His involvement in the proclamation of the Gospel is explored through his Christology, his translation of the New Testament, and his interpretation of Therese of Lisieux. The examination of his work yields three main findings. First, dialogue and proclamation in the Chinese context are inseparable. Second, Wu applies an existential hermeneutic of joy as his criterion of comparison, through which he can appreciate with continuity the gift of his native traditions and the gift of Christ. Third, he displays a dynamic and contextualized theology of religions that can be termed “transfigured harmony.” His contribution to Christian theology lies in his ability to hold opposites in creative tension as well as his literary, aesthetic, and sapiential theological imagination.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, Media and Communication

Generations of women in the Evangelical Church have embodied narratives passed from mother to daughter, from church leadership, and through their religious communities. These narratives, including those of women's subservience and deserving of suffering endured from spouses, church leaders, and others, have origins in the earliest days of church history. In this thesis I examine how such narratives are embedded in books on pubertal guidance targeted to mothers and daughters in Evangelical Christian communities. Building on Fish's work on interpretive communities, Gramsci's conceptualization of hegemony, Foucault theorizing on power, and an interdisciplinary literature on the interaction between religion, culture, and politics, I interrogate themes of puberty, sexual function, gender roles, consent, and gender-based violence addressed in books on pubertal guidance, and how these books contribute to or reinforce evangelical Christian doctrinal narratives on gender and sexuality. Through a methodological approach using grounded theory, narrative inquiry, autoethnography, and textual analysis, findings indicate Evangelical Christian culture creates an interpretive community which drives only acceptable interpretation of religious texts (primarily the Bible), gender norms, and patriarchal power dynamics. Themes emerging from the texts analyzed, including Complementarianism, submission, purity, modesty, inadequacy, and silencing, have deep consequences not only for women and girls in Evangelical Christian communities, but for society at large as the legislative push for adherence to Evangelical Christian doctrinal ideologies work to remove access to basic human rights for people who do not adhere them. Misinformation, incomplete information, and hegemonic narratives serve to perpetuate gender inequality and have broad effects on women's and girls' mental, emotional, and physical health. In light of the most recent intrusions by Christian Nationalists into the legislative (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Arts, Wittenberg University, 2023, History

This thesis explores the complex and politically significant history of America's Religious Right. From the 1940s to the end of the 20th century, the Religious Right built upon public fear and unease, shaping their social and political positions for political, not theological, impact. As a political group, the Religious Right necessarily included a more social perspective to their political actions with the notion that certain elements of American society were morally dangerous and looking to the government to correct these flaws. By personalizing politics and emphasizing divisive wedge issues, they built a network of dedicated supporters who propelled their rise to power. This approach revitalized economic principles and introduced new wedge issues to direct public debate to follow the path they chose. The underpinnings of the Religious Right began to emerge in the 1940s and 1950s as World War II dramatically changed the character of life in the United States. Televangelists began to become major household names with reach and sway as economic and technologic effects of the war created a new market of television viewers. At the same time, the Civil Rights Movement started to threaten the stability of the racial hierarchies that the social order was based upon to a large extent. All the while, communism loomed as a dark specter over the nation. By the late 1980s and 1990s, the Religious Right had firmly entrenched itself as a political and social landscape of the United States. This achievement was the result of calculated political maneuvering over multiple generations, utilizing personal matters to unite a passionate and determined political base. Notably, the Religious Right's causes were manifestations of the public fears of their time. The dangerous element invoked by these fears evolved from communism to civil rights activists to LGBTQ+ individuals who bucked the roles society established for them. For the Religious Right, the theological backing for their cau (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, History

This dissertation examines early Christian literary hierarchies and categories, beginning in the pre-Christian context of the Hellenistic world and ending in the early Middle Ages. While scholars have long studied the formation of the biblical canon and the development of ancillary classes of text, such as the so-called “apocrypha,” many accounts of this history struggle to evince how these intellectual and institutional categories changed over time, which tends to obscure early Christian intellectual nuance and circumspection. This project improves our understanding by rooting early Christian evaluation of sacred (or potentially sacred) literature in the literary criticism of the classical world. It finds that, over the course of centuries, early Christianity generally moved away from the question of textual authenticity to the question of theological authority. In many cases, this movement corresponded to the maturation of the institutional episcopacy, particularly in the post-Constantinian era. Consequently, while Hellenistic literary criticism had once provided the chief template for Christians to evaluate books, hierarchies of text became increasingly institutionalized and supposed to have been settled by earlier authorities. By the sixth century, some Christian commentators forgot the meaning of the older categories altogether.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2023, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

This dissertation explores issues of music-historiography, performance-practice, and pedagogy in the music of Sir John Kenneth Tavener (1944-2013). Best remembered as “England's Holy Minimalist,” Tavener left behind a complex musical legacy, rich in tradition and full of apparent contradictions. At once sensuous and austere, Tavener's music continues to move listeners, baffle scholars, and challenge performers. The first chapter grapples with the “Holy Minimalist” label, and offers an alternative rooted in Tavener's own reaction to it. The second chapter explores Tavener's relationship with musical modernism, primarily through his commentary on relevant composers. The third chapter discusses Tavener's compositional practice through expressions of his Orthodox faith and the assimilation of Byzantine liturgical elements into his music. The fourth chapter reflects on an all-Tavener program I performed on March 24, 2022. The fifth chapter explores the resonances between Tavener's music and contemporary voice pedagogy, and offers several models and devices relevant to his and related compositions.

PHD, Kent State University, 2023, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Sociology and Criminology

This study investigates the lived experiences of Black Christian women diagnosed with clinical depression or Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Depression, sometimes referred to as “voice of the devil” throughout the African diaspora, is often a taboo topic in Christian circles, and particularly Black Christian circles in the U.S. Black Americans are the most religious group yet, encountering the highest rates of chronic depression (Brody, Pratt and Hughes 2018). This reality describes a dark side to religion and points to the paradox that describes protective factors of religiosity and spirituality among Black Christians, who are highly religious and spiritual, yet experience higher rates of chronic clinical depression. Exploration is guided by the following question: 1.) What are the lived experiences of Black Christian women diagnosed with clinical depression? To date, literature has focused primarily on the protective factors that religiosity and spirituality can provide. However, an intersectional framework is seldom used to account for the complex and rich relationship of Black Christian women and mental health in the U.S. The purpose of this study is to address the gaps in the literature by offering a current analysis of Black Christian women's experiences living with depression. To do so, sources of information, experiences, and perceptions of discrimination and depression, as well as help-seeking behaviors, are analyzed and discussed. By exploring the unique experiences of Black Christian women in the U.S. diagnosed with clinical depression, we are positioned to gain greater insight into issues of discrimination and stigma, diagnosis and treatment, and access to care.