The following fellows are in residence for the 2008-2009 academic year:

Habib Babai

Religious Studies, Doctoral Fellow

Babaei studies the relationship between Islam and the West. In particular, he is interested in the relationship between temporal love and spiritual love; existential spirituality; the theory of civilization; the bases of freedom in Islamic thought; philosophy of history; and, most recently, interpretation and modernization. He has studied the Arabic language, logic, Islamic philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, history and theosophy and has taught occidentalism, theology, and literature. He serves as the Director of the group, “Islam and the West” at the AISC in Qom, Iran.

Wilson Brissett

English, Research Fellow / Ph.D. University of Virginia (2008)

Wilson specializes in early American literature and culture. He also writes on theology and politics in the United States and the global south.

Matthew B. Crawford

Political Thought, Research Fellow / Ph.D. University of Chicago (2000)

A contributing editor of The New Atlantis, Matthew is currently writing a book for The Penguin Press that will explicate the experiences of making things and fixing things. These activities illuminate the mutual entanglement of mind and hand, and thereby shed light on certain permanent requirements of human flourishing that material culture must answer to. Tentatively Shop Class as Soulcraft: Technology, Manual Competence, and the Struggle for Agency, it questions the inevitability of our increasing manual disengagement from the world as mystified, high-tech consumers. It also makes a case for rehabilitating the manual trades, as “embodied cognition” and its role in our experience of agency lends itself to a critique of the prevailing political economy (and corresponding educational regime) that pushes people toward abstract “knowledge work.”

Jeffrey Dill

Sociology, Doctoral Fellow

Jeff is interested in questions of pluralism and difference in educational systems, specifically moral education and the legitimation and socialization processes in schools. His dissertation examines the cosmopolitan ideal in education and its implications for individual and collective identity.

Ann W. Duncan

Religious Studies, Associate Fellow

Ann's work focuses on intersections of religion and public life in American history. Her past work has examined American Christianity during times of war and intersections of religion and government. Her dissertation examines the varied and changing understandings of motherhood in American Christianity and American culture and how these understandings are shaped by doctrinal, historical and social factors.

David Franz

Sociology, Postdoctoral Fellow / Ph.D. University of Virginia (2008)

David studies the relationship of economic life to the broader culture, especially the often unnoticed interplay between business and conceptions of the good. His dissertation, titled “The Ethics of Incorporation,” examines the latent moral content of business management theory, exploring the influence of management theory on ideas of leadership, collective purpose, responsibility, and guilt. David has also written about the history of cubicles, intellectuals, and the role of religion in public life. His work has been featured in several print and online publications, including Arts & Letters Daily, the Atlantic, the New Republic, and the Wilson Quarterly.

Amy Gilbert

Philosophy, Associate Fellow

Edward J. K. Gitre

History, Postdoctoral Fellow / Ph.D Rutgers University (2008)

Ed is a modern U.S. historian, with specialization in intellectual, cultural, and religious history. He holds a Ph.D. in history from Rutgers University, as well as two masters degrees, one in theology and the other in European cultural history. As a postdoctoral fellow, he will be revising his Ph.D. dissertation for press publication. This project, titled “America Adjusted: Conformity, Boredom, and the Modern Self, c.1920–1980,” explores the problem of boredom as a social problem in postwar American culture. While the project focuses on the specific development of post-Darwinian social theory (“social adjustment”) and the relationship between social scientific knowledge and non-academic discourse, it seeks to illuminate the long-term effects of World War II and the Cold War militarization of American society.

Karen Guth

Religious Studies, Graduate Fellow

Karen’s field of study is theological ethics. Her work focuses on Christian social ethics and religion in public life. She is particularly interested in the role of Christianity in cultural, social, and political criticism in 20th century America. Her current work focuses on Christian thinkers who address the relationship between Christianity and the “world” and how these thinkers envision Christian political engagement.

Jonas Hart

Sociology, Associate Fellow

Adam Kadlac

Philosophy, Research Fellow / Ph.D. University of Virginia (2008)

Adam's primary research interests are in contemporary and historical ethics. His recently completed dissertation examines personhood as a moral concept and the way differing approaches to personhood are related to more general approaches to moral philosophy. He has also published a paper on Descartes' moral theory in the journal Ethical Theory and Moral Practice and has interests in political philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy.

Ryan McDermott

English, Associate Fellow

Ryan studies medieval English literature and focuses on the intersections of Christian theology and literature in late 14th-century poetry, especially the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and the Pearl Poet. His dissertation project seeks models for ethical deliberation in these poets' adaptations of biblical exegesis to poetic invention, and theorizes a more robust literary ethics than the ethics of alterity that dominates contemporary critical discourse.

Christopher McKnight Nichols

History, Postdoctoral Fellow / Ph.D. University of Virginia (2008)

Chris specializes in American intellectual, cultural, and political history from the late nineteenth through the twentieth century, with a focus on the Progressive Era. He is revising for publication his Ph.D. dissertation, titled “From Empire to Isolation: Internationalism and Isolationism in American Thought,” which examines the dynamic interplay of international engagement, isolationist thought, and domestic reform from 1890 to 1940. Chris has presented papers and published articles and opinion pieces in academic journals and newspapers on subjects including historical debates over the role of the U.S. in the world, transnationalism, the Spanish-American War, race and segregation, the philosophy of history, deliberative democracy, and foreign policy. With Charles T. Mathewes, Dr. Nichols is co-editor of Prophesies of Godlessness: Predictions of America’s Imminent Secularization from the Puritans to the Present Day.

Scott Nesbit

History, Doctoral Fellow

Scott‘s research interests lie in the religious grounds for post-conflict resolution in the modern world. More specifically, his dissertation examines the idea of forgiveness as a moral and political problem for northern whites, southern whites, and African Americans after slavery and the Civil War.

Hilde Restad

Politics, Doctoral Fellow

Christina Simko

Sociology, Graduate Fellow

Regina Smardon

Sociology, Associate Fellow

Greg Thompson

Religious Studies, Associate Fellow

Greg is a PhD student in the Theology, Ethics, and Culture program in the University of Virginia's Department of Religious Studies. His research interests include theology, social theory, political thought, and American religious history. Currently his work focuses on love as a political idea.

Free Williams

Religious Studies, Associate Fellow

Andrew Witmer

History, Postdoctoral Fellow / Ph.D. University of Virginia (2008)

Andrew’s research and publications explore the intersection of religion, science, and racial thought in the nineteenth-century United States, with particular attention to competing understandings of the human person and efforts to deny full humanity to certain racial groups. He is currently at work on a book manuscript that examines the influence of nineteenth-century Protestant missionary work in sub-Saharan Africa on American conceptions of race and approaches to race relations. His publications include essays in Prophesies of Godlessness, The North Star: A Journal of African-American Religious History, and Crucible of the American Civil War, along with entries in African American National Biography and the Encyclopedia of Missions and Missionaries.