Summer Session 2010 - Instructors
Below is a list of instructors who taught courses during Summer Session 2010. For information on Summer Session 2011, please click here.
Laura Anderson is a fourth-year GTU Ph.D. student in biblical studies who has worked as a teaching assistant, co-instructor and solo instructor for courses at PSR, the GTU, and PSR’s Certificate of Ministry Studies program. Because effective critical writing is vital to success in graduate school and ministry, Anderson is deeply committed to helping students learn and practice the set of writing skills needed to produce good critical writing. When not consumed with the tasks of academia, Anderson enjoys writing poetry and children’s fiction.
Teaching: The Art and Technique of Effective Academic Writing
Ellen Bass
Ellen Bass's most recent book of poetry, The Human Line, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2007 and was named a Notable Book of 2007 by the San Francisco Chronicle. She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the groundbreaking No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women (Doubleday, 1973) and has published several volumes of poetry, including Mules of Love (BOA, 2002) which won the Lambda Literary Award. Her work has been published in many journals and magazines including The Atlantic Monthly, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Progressive, and The Kenyon Review. Among her awards for poetry are a Pushcart Prize, the Elliston Book Award, The Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod/Hardman, the Larry Levis Prize from Missouri Review, the New Letters Prize, the Greensboro Award, the Chautaqua Poetry Prize, a Fellowship from the California Arts Council and a Fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her nonfiction books include Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth and Their Allies (HarperCollins, 1996), I Never Told Anyone: Writings by Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (HarperCollins, 1983) and The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (HarperCollins, 1988, 2008) which has been translated into twelve languages. She teaches in the MFA writing program at Pacific University and at conferences and workshops nationally and internationally. Her website is www.ellenbass.com
Saturday Workshop: Poetry as a Spiritual Practice
Followed by free poetry reading.
Michael Bausch
Dr. Michael Bausch, DMin, teaches the use of digital media arts in worship and education based on many years of UCC parish ministry experience. He has taught in the D.Min., M.Div., and Certificate in Ministry and Technology programs at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, and summer sessions and online courses at PSR. He is currently minister at Summit Congregational UCC of Dubuque, Iowa, and a lecturer in Hebrew Scriptures at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, where he makes his residence. His publications include Silver Screen, Sacred Story: Using Multimedia in Worship.
Teaching ONLINE: Social Media and Communications Theology (course cancelled)
Sharon Bray
Dr. Sharon Bray is best known for her innovative work leading expressive writing groups for cancer patients. She is the author of three books: This Way to Canada, a children’s book; When Words Heal: Writing Through Cancer; and A Healing Journey: Writing Together Through Breast Cancer. She is also co-editor of the anthology Learning to Live Again, published by the Stanford School of Medicine. She teaches creative writing for the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program and leads a number of writing groups for cancer patients. She makes her home in San Diego.
Teaching:SP-2988: Writing as Healing Ministry
Free public lecture, Tuesday, July 20, 7:00-9:00pm
Mary Therese DesCamp
A graduate of PSR (M.Div., 1992) and the GTU (Ph.D., 2004), Rev. Dr. DesCamp roots her spiritual practice in her childhood Catholicism, her adult pastoral work in the United Church of Christ and the United Church of Canada, and her training in Christian and eastern meditation practices. She has published one book on cognitive linguistics and Pseudo-Philo, authored multiple academic and popular articles, helped found the Society of Biblical Literature section on Cognitive Linguistics and Biblical Studies, recently completed two chapters for a forthcoming textbook on cognitive linguistics and biblical studies, and teaches about prayer and cognition in the U.S. and Canada. Together with her husband, Therese runs Heart’s Rest Retreat in New Denver, British Columbia, which specializes in affordable retreats and sabbatical stays for ministers and academics.
Teaching: Sustaining Vocation: Finding and Keeping a Personal Prayer Practice
Elizabeth Dilley
Rev. Elizabeth Dilley is a long-time student of smaller congregations and the pastor at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Red Oak - a small, thriving, progressive church in southwest Iowa. She received her M.Div. from Pacific School of Religion in 2003 and her B.S. in Educational Theatre from New York University. In addition to her church work, Rev. Dilley is a part-time health educator with Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, where she works with people of all ages to promote healthy life and sexual choices. She is active in many local ministries, as well as serving on the Red Oak School Board, and participates in wider settings of the United Church of Christ - including membership in the Southwestern Association's Committee on Ministry, the 2030 Clergy Network, the Iowa Conference General Synod Delegate team, and she was a member of the 2004-05 Iowa Conference Minister Search Committee. She is also a part of the UCC Presidential Fellows, a pilot program inaugurated by the Rev. John Thomas, the now-former General Minister and President of the UCC.
James Forbes
The Rev. Dr. James Alexander Forbes, Jr., Senior Minister Emeritus of The Riverside Church, is founder and president of the Healing of the Nations Foundation. He was the first African-American to serve as minister of Riverside's interdenominational, interracial, and international congregation. He is an ordained minister in the American Baptist Churches. Before being called to Riverside’s pulpit, Dr. Forbes served as Professor of Preaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, as well as teaching at Auburn Theological Seminary. In national and international religious circles, Dr. Forbes is known as the preacher’s preacher because of his extensive preaching career and his charismatic style. Newsweek magazine recognized Forbes as one of the 12 “most effective preachers” in the English-speaking world. This pastor, educator, administrator, community activist and interfaith leader was twice designated as one of America’s greatest Black preachers by Ebony magazine. Dr. Forbes has earned three degrees and has been awarded 14 honorary degrees. He earned a Doctor of Ministry degree from Colgate-Rochester Divinity School in Rochester, NY; a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, NY; and a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Howard University in Washington, DC.
Teaching: Preaching the Gospel of Holistic Health
Free public lecture, Tuesday, July 13, 7:00-9:00pm
Horace Griffin
Dr. Horace Griffin joined PSR as Associate Professor of Field Education and Leadership Development in 2009. Prior to this he served as director of field education and adjunct professor of pastoral theology at General Theological Seminary in New York City. Dr. Griffin is the author of Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians and Gays in Black Churches (Pilgrim Press, 2006). He received an MDiv from Boston University School of Theology, and an MA and PhD from Vanderbilt University.
Teaching: Cults & SEctX (course cancelled)
Jehon Grist
Dr.Jehon Grist, Ph.D., is Executive Director of Lehrhaus Judaica, the Bay Area School for adult Jewish education. He received his Ph.D. in ancient Near Eastern cultures from UC Berkeley after doctoral research at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and archaeological field research in Israel, the Gaza Strip, and Egypt. He has published articles and photos on the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, and the Biblical Archaeology Review. An instructor and assistant professor at UC Berkeley, and Cal State Fresno, Dr. Grist has spent the last 20 years administering Lehrhaus and teaching courses at various Jewish community and secular institutions in the Bay Area and Los Angeles..
Teaching:Discovering Our Biblical Ancestors, 2000-586 BCE: History, Culture and Faiths
Dr. Halpern is the founder of The Chaplaincy Institute for Arts and Interfaith Ministries in Berkeley, CA. She received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and her Masters Degree from Holy Names University 1995. From 1986-89 she participated in The Concord Institute: Certificate and Teacher Training: Counseling for Helping Professionals, Concord, MA, and completed her Doctorate of Ministry Degree while faculty for John F. Kennedy University and teaching for Matthew Fox, Naropa Oakland, University of Creation of Spirituality. In 1992 she was Commissioned as an Interfaith Peace Chaplain through the Peace Abbey, Sherborn MA, an affiliate of Harvard Divinity School, and Ordained an Interfaith Minister 1998. She continues to create and exhibit her artwork including exhibitions at Marin General Hospital and the Institute for Health & Healing. She has been an administrator for the Antioch College Buddhist Studies Program in India, and led educational groups for ten years in India and Nepal. She has served on the board of the Society for Arts in Healthcare, and designed healthcare facilities, including work for The Children's Hospital in San Diego. In 1995 she toured Russian pediatric hospitals as a clown with Patch Adams, MD and in Gesundheight Institute. She is the author and illustrator of the bilingual children's book "Where is Tibet?" The focus of her life’s work has always been exploring the intersections of art/creativity, spirituality, education and healing. 2003 marked the publishing of “To Heal the Broken Heart: Prayers, Poems and Art by Gina Rose Halpern”. Her websites are www.chaplaincyinstitute.org and www.ginarosehalpern.com.
Teaching a Saturday Workshop: Nurtured by Spirit - Fed by Prayer: Exploring Creative & Interfaith Spiritual Practices to Re-vitalize Our Lives
William Harralson
William S. Harralson, J.D. is a practicing mediator and consultant. Mr. Harralson currently serves as a panel mediator for the Alameda, Contra Costa, and Santa Clara County superior courts. He is the author of several published articles and teaches courses on the intersections between Christianity, faith, mediation, and law. He is a former adjunct professor in practical theology with Pacific School of Religion.
Teaching a Saturday Workshop: Mediation for Ministry: Responding to Congregational Conflict (Course Cancelled)
Daniel Helminiak
Dr. Daniel Helminiak is Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia. He holds a PhD in Systematic Theology from Andover Newton Theological School and Boston College, where he was teaching assistant to Prof. Bernard Lonergan, and a PhD in Human Development from the University of Texas at Austin. As a psychotherapist, social scientist, and theologian, he works to integrate religion and psychology and, thus, to suggest what wholesome human living means in a pluralistic and secularized world. In other words, his specialization is spirituality. His areas of special interest are post-childhood development and human sexuality. He is widely known for his bestseller What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality. His other books include Spirituality for our Global Community: From Traditional Religion to a World at Peace (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008); The Transcended Christian (Alyson, 2007); Sex and the Sacred (Haworth Press, 2006); Meditation Without Myth (Crossroad, 2005); Religion and the Human Sciences and The Human Core of Spirituality (State University of New York Press, 1998, 1996); and Spiritual Development and The Same Jesus: A Contemporary Christology (Loyola University Press, 1987, 1986). His web site is www.visionsofdaniel.net.
Teaching: Sex and the Sacred: Theo-Psychological Issues
Christina Hutchins
Christina Hutchins' work appears in Alehouse, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, Salmagundi, The Southern Review and Women’s Review of Books. She has received two Barbara Deming Poetry Awards, has won the Villa Montalvo Poetry Prize, and Sixteen Rivers Press will publish The Stranger Dissolves in early 2011. She is the Poet Laureate of Albany, California.
Teaching: The Unrealized: Poetry and the Sacred
Jeffrey Kuan
Dr. Kuan is Associate Professor of Old Testament and Director of the Certificate of Ministry Studies Program at PSR. His scholarship focuses on ancient Near Eastern – including Israelite – history, Asian and Asian American biblical interpretation, and pedagogies for teaching the Bible in church. Dr. Kuan is associate editor of the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible and a member of the Council of the Society of the Biblical Literature. His publications include Neo-Assyrian Historical Inscriptions and Syria-Palestine (1995), “Diasporic Reading of a Diasporic Text: Identity Politics and Race Relations and the Book of Esther” (2000), "Samsi-ilu and the Realpolitik of Israel and Aram-Damascus in the Eighth Century BCE," (2001), "Reading Amy Tan Reading Job,"(2003), and Ways of Being, Ways of Reading: Asian-American Biblical Interpretation, co-edited with Mary F. Foskett (2006). He is an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church and a member of the General Conference Board of Higher Education and Ministry. Dr. Kuan received his BTh from Trinity Theological College, Singapore, 1980; his MTS from Southern Methodist University, 1986; and his PhD from Emory University, 1994.
Teaching: BS-1135: Biblical Hebrew I, BS-1136: Biblical Hebrew II, Teaching Difficult Texts: Hermeneutical and Pedagogical Strategies (Course cancelled)
Boyung Lee
Dr. Lee is Associate Professor of Educational Ministries at PSR. She is a United Methodist whose ministry experience ranges from one of Korea's poorest communities to an affluent New England suburb. She considers Korea's poor, particularly its women, to be brilliant commentators on justice and realized eschatology. One of Dr. Lee's pedagogical goals is to help people find truth within themselves and to reflect critically on it in their present life contexts, thus to descry new futures/creations. Dr. Lee's research interests are communitarian Christian religious education, postcolonial biblical pedagogy, Asian feminist theology, and racial/ethnic and sexual identity formation. Dr. Lee received her BA from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, 1987; her ThM from Yonsei University, 1989; her MDiv from Claremont School of Theology, 1994; and her PhD from Boston College, 2004.
Teaching: Teaching Difficult Texts: Hermeneutical and Pedagogical Strategies (Course cancelled)
Woo Min Lee
Woo Min Lee is a doctoral student in Biblical Languages at the Graduate Theological Union.
Teaching: BS-1135: Biblical Hebrew I, BS-1136: Biblical Hebrew II
Elizabeth Leung
Rev. Elizabeth Leung is Coordinating Minister of the Asian and Pacific Islander Roundtable at PSR's Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry. She coordinates the Network on Religion and Justice for Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People. Rev. Leung is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ and a trained spiritual director. Elizabeth Leung earned her Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union in 2006 in the field of Christian Spirituality.
Teaching: LGBT Religious Issues in Postcolonial Perspectives (course cancelled)
Benny Liew
Dr. Liew is Professor of New Testament at PSR. He is most interested and invested in transdisciplinary study of the New Testament. Alongside New Testament studies, his scholarly interests include literary theory, postcolonial studies, gender/sexuality studies, and ethnic studies (particularly Asian American history and literature). Dr. Liew is the author of What Is Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics? Reading the New Testament (2008), and Politics of Parousia: Reading Mark Inter(con)textually (1999). He also edited Postcolonial Interventions: Essays in Honor of R. S. Sugirtharajah (2009), They Were All Together in One Place? Toward Minority Biblical Criticism with Randall Bailey and Fernando Segovia (2009), and the last issue of the journal, Semeia, with Gale Yee on "The Bible in Asian America" (2002). Dr. Liew also serves on several international editorial boards, and is currently the book review editor of the journal, Biblical Interpretation. Dr. Liew received his BA from Olivet Nazarene University, 1984; his MA from Olivet Nazarene University, 1986; his MA from Vanderbilt University, 1994; and his PhD, Vanderbilt University, 1997.
Teaching: Myths, Gospels, and Human Lives
Penny Nixon
The Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon is currently the Senior Minister at the Congregational Church of San Mateo (www.ccsm-ucc.org) a progressive church on the peninsula. In 2007 she left her position as Senior Minister of Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco after more than a decade of service. She has served as a campus minster in New York, South Africa, and San Francisco. At PSR she is returning for her third year as an adjunct preaching professor. She lives in Alameda with her partner and daughter.
Teaching: Coaching for Effective and Embodied Preaching
Donna Schaper
Rev. Donna Schaper is Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church, in Greenwich Village, where worship is lively and experimental, undocumented immigrants lead the New York City New Sanctuary Movement, a half dozen seminarians are trained each year in public ministry, and a “Bailout Theater” feeds and enjoys the homeless. She blogs on the Huffington Post and has written 31 books, including Sacred Chow: Some Holy Ways to Eat and Sabbath Keeping, which deals with time famine and how to stay alive in ministry. She writes and consults as a “turn-around specialist” for congregations through her consultancy, Bricks without Straw.
Teaching: The Dash Between the Nitty and the Gritty: Practical Parish Ministry
Free public lecture, Tuesday, August 10, 7:00-9:00pm
Pat Schneider
Pat Schneider, author of nine books, including Writing Alone and With Others (Oxford University Press) and Wake Up Laughing: A Spiritual Autobiography, has pioneered a writing method that has gained international attention, both for its effectiveness in deepening the artistry of the individual writer, and as a way of empowerment for low-income and other under-served populations. Her website is www.patschneider.com.
Teaching: RA-3700: Creative Writing Workshop
Free public lecture, Tuesday, August 3, 7:00-9:00pm
Rossitza Schroeder
Dr. Rossitza Schroeder has studied Byzantine history and art at Sofia University in Bulgaria, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX and University of Maryland from where she received her PhD in 2005. She is currently working on a book that considers the complicated interaction of images and viewers in late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century monastic churches in Byzantine Macedonia and Constantinople.
Teaching: Icons and Their Audiences (course cancelled)
John Shelby Spong
The Right Reverened John Shelby Spong has been an ordained priest and an elected bishop of the Episcopal Church for 54 years. As a leading spokesperson for an open, scholarly, and progressive Christianity, Bishop Spong has taught at Harvard and at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He has also lectured at universities, conference centers, and churches in North America, Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific. He has authored 82 books which have sold over a million copies, including: A New Christianity for a New World; Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism; Resurrection: Myth or Reality? Why Christianity Must Change or Die; and his autobiography, Here I Stand.
Teaching: Eternal Life: A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell
Free public lecture, Tuesday, July 27, 7:00-9:00pm
Justin Tanis
Justin Tanis is Community Education and Outreach Manager at the National Center for Transgender Equality. He has worked in the LGBT non-profit field for over 20 years as a community organizer, manager, educator and program specialist. He holds degrees from Mount Holyoke College, Harvard University, and San Francisco Theological Seminary, as well as certificates in graphic design and multimedia design. He is the author of Transgender Ministry, Theology and Communities of Faith. Prior to working at NCTE, he served as Director of Leadership Development for an international organization serving the spiritual needs of LGBT people.
Teaching: Queer Theology and Politics
Nichola Torbett
Nichola Torbett is the founding director of Seminary of the Street, a nonprofit institute for the spiritual formation of social change workers in the context of community. She previously served as director of national programs for the Network of Spiritual Progressives, an interfaith organization working on the intersection of love, meaning, and politics. She worked as a professional writer and editor in Minnesota and got her political start as Minnesota State Co-Coordinator for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign. The latter experience convinced her that powerful transformations are possible when activists actually embody, in community, the alternative values they are fighting for. This is the kind of social change work she wants to catalyze in the world. Nichola has degrees from the University of Toledo and Indiana University at Bloomington. She has read widely in cultural studies, theology, and psychology, but has been most radically shaped by engagement with people who were willing to be real with her across lines of difference. She is interested in how to nurture deep relationships among people from different spheres, how to build movements that foster psychospiritual healing for everyone they touch, and how to create necessary conflict with the status quo without creating needless opposition and "enemies."
Jason Hamza van Boom
Jason Hamza van Boom is a PhD student in the History of Christianity at Graduate Theological Union. He received his MA in philosophy from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, and studied Eastern Orthodox history and theology at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. He received a BA in Liberal Arts from Thomas Aquinas College. He was a GTU Newhall scholar three times, and was one of the first recipients of a grant from the Islamic Scholarship Fund. He is also development and marketing director at Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California; the host of "Islam and Authors: Conversations on New Books and Plays"; and a blogger at Tikkun Daily and Illume Magazine. He gives lectures and talks on Christian-Islamic relations. He lives in Albany, California.
Teaching: Introduction to Christian History
Alicia Vargas
The Rev. Dr. Alicia Vargas currently teaches multicultural and contextual studies and is director of contextual education at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. She was born and raised in Havana, Cuba. She serves the church in various consulting capacities, is a popular speaker on multicultural matters of the church, as a member of diverse groups such as the ELCA Theologians of Color. Dr. Vargas’ most recent publications include “The Construction of Latina Theology” in Currents in Theology and Mission and “Reading Ourselves into the Cross Story: Luther and United States Latinos” in Cross Examinations: Readings on the Meaning of the Cross Today. She is also the author of Introduccion a La Disputacion de Leipzig-Informe de Martin Lutero a Jorge Spalatin en Lutero al habla and the forthcoming Como estudiar la Biblia/How to Study the Bible. Vargas is passionate about her research interests: Latina Christology and Pauline theology and mission of inclusivity.
Teaching: Mujerista Theology (course cancelled)
We reserve the right to change course descriptions, instructors, dates and hours of instruction, meeting places, and prices. In the event of a conflict between printed material and information on this Web site, the information on this Web site takes precedence. Courses that have been cancelled due to low enrollment may be absent from this list. Please contact the Summer Session Office for any questions regarding cancelled courses.
