Category: Faculty Life

“While some intelligence is occasionally useful, the path of scholarship is ultimately about character: courage to take risks, patience to overcome adversity, faith to rise from failure, and reverence for all we experience through the journey.” — Casey Elledge, Professor of Religion 2019 Winner of the Gustavus Scholarly Accomplishment Award

“My scholarship seeks to help people find meaning and value in both the ordinary and the extraordinary. This is also my aim in teaching. We encourage students to explore issues that matter to them because we scholars have experienced that intellectual intrigue and excitement. Teaching and scholarship are complementary enterprises; each makes the other better.…

“One of the things I love about working with Gustavus students on research is that we get to discover together what they like and don’t like about the research experience. For some students the experience affirms their ideas about what research IS, and how it feels. In these cases we can build on this and…

“One of my favorite things about my recent sabbatical was meeting people in so many different disciplines and contexts engaged in overlapping issues. I was able to present my political science research to audiences in international studies, philosophy, cultural studies, and Nordic languages, and literature departments! These experiences felt a bit like being back in…

“My publications over the years have focused on topical issues such as identity in the African/African Diaspora historical novel, and female condition in the discourses of power. I have also published on African verbal art, and in the process challenged Eurocentric theories that I find inadequate in the study of African folklore. I share my…

“I love doing research at Gustavus because it’s such a supportive environment. Here it is possible to explore new research topics and work with students on new exciting projects. One of the best moments of my time at Gustavus has been the opportunity to work on a research project with two undergraduates on the impact…

“My favorite moment in a class: someone, in frustration and confusion, asks a question. And I respond ‘YES! Exactly!’ They’re taken aback of course; they’d hoped I might, well, answer the question, not express delight at their confusion.But that’s what philosophy does: it asks the questions that lie out at the edges of understanding. With…

“Writing is the ultimate creative act. It’s how we craft and share our vision of the world, and how we remake ourselves and tell our stories. And what if, as I write, my thinking changes? I revise. Here at Gustavus, I’m happiest when I sit down with student writers as they recreate themselves through writing.…

“I strive to provide an excellent liberal arts education for our students that is rigorous and innovative, focusing on intellectual and personal skills as well as building knowledge. My objectives are to help students weigh evidence, read and think critically, reflect thoughtfully and express ideas with precision and grace. I help them become persons who…

“Helping Gustavus students develop their capacities for historical thinking—for making histories, or historical interpretations, through skilled and imaginative analysis of evidence from the past, and for seeing connections between past and present—is immensely gratifying. So too is inspiring them to be fully engaged in learning for life. For these reasons and more, I love professing…