Faculty 2007-2008

Natalie Alexander                nalex@truman.edu         Ext. 4054
Dr. Alexander has been at Truman since 1993. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from Northwestern University and B.A. (magna cum laude) Beloit College.  She is a member of the American Philosophical Association, Society for Women in Philosophy, Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy and Phi Beta Kappa.  Dr. Alexander's teaching emphasizes recognizing multiple viewpoints and thinking most clearly where we feel most strongly.  Recent presentations include "Love and Respect in Kofman, Lugones, and Gordon" and  "Race and Gender in Rousseau: Derrida, Kofman, Lugones."  Her areas of emphasis include contemporary continental philosophy, feminist and gender theory, and history of philosophy.

Mark Appold               mappold@truman.edu            Ext. 7244 
Dr. Appold has been at Truman since 1976 where has taught in the disciplines of Classical Languages, International Education Abroad, and Philosophy and Religion.  He received his Th.D. in Biblical Studies with a concentration in New Testament under Ernst Käsemann at the University of Tübingen, Germany.  His dissertation on the “Oneness Motif in the Fourth Gospel” was published in the Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen z. N.T.;  Reihe 2:1.  Following undergraduate studies at Concordia College in Milwaukee and undergraduate studies in psychology and graduate studies in philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, he completed seminary training at Concordia in St. Louis where he received his M.Div.  In addition to his past 35-year tenure as pastor of Faith Lutheran Church and Student Center in Kirksville, he served in ministry at Washington DC and in campus ministry at Köln, Germany.  As Visiting Professor, he taught at the Nagercoil Seminary in India, the University of Iowa, Christ Seminary in St. Louis, and the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago.  In addition to his work in biblical theology and Johannine studies, his most recent publications appear in the three-volume Bethsaida series published by the Truman State University Press.   He has given presentations at the International Meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature in Budapest, Lausanne, Capetown, Rome, and Cambridge, Singapore, Edinburgh, and Vienna.  He is a member of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, a contributor to the UNO Archaeological Conferences, and continues to serve as a Project Director for the Bethsaida Archaeological Excavation in Israel.

Wm. Michael Ashcraft           washcraf@truman.edu      Ext. 7531
Dr. Ashcraft has been at Truman since 1996. He holds his doctoral and master’s degrees from the University of Virginia. He received his Master of Divinity from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and his bachelor’s from the University of Tennessee at Martin. Dr. Ashcraft has taught at Carleton College and James Madison University. He published The Dawn of the New Cycle: Point Loma Theosophists and American Culture in 2002 with the University of Tennessee Press. In 2005, he and Dr. Daschke published New Religious Movements: A Documentary Reader, an anthology for undergraduates,  with New York University Press. He is a member of the Board of Editorial Consultants for Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. He is also a member of the American Academy of Religion. His areas of specialization are American religious history, new religious movements, and gender and religion. He maintains an interest in African American religions, and theory and method in religious studies.

Patricia Burton           ss84@truman.edu              Ext. 7247
Dr. Burton has been at Truman since 1987. Her areas of specialization are Logic and History of Philosophy. Her current research interests are (1) Philosophy of Dance and (2) Stoic influences on St. Augustine's doctrines of textual interpretation, aesthetics, and scientific inquiry. In 2002, she was the first recipient of the “Walker and Doris Allen Fellowship for Faculty Excellence.” She had previously received the Educator of the Year Award (1994), the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (1995), and the William O’Donnell Lee Advising Award (1995). Dr. Burton received her bachelor of arts degree in mathematics and her master’s in philosophy from the University of Georgia; plus she received her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a member of the American Philosophical Association, the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, the Medieval Academy of American, the North American Patristics Society, the National Dance Association, Phi Beta Kappa, and Phi Kappa Phi. She currently serves as the faculty advisor to numerous student organizations including the university’s Society of Dance Arts (TSODA) and Pershing Society.

Dereck Daschke                ddaschke@truman.edu        Ext. 6005
Dr. Daschke joined the Truman faculty in 2000. Dr. Daschke received a master’s and a doctorate degree in divinity from The University of Chicago Divinity School, specializing in the area of psychology and sociology of religion. He also holds bachelors’ degrees in psychology and religious studies from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His academic interests include apocalypticism, the psychology of religion, new religious movements, religion and health, and ancient and modern Judaism. He is an officer of the Delta Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Truman and the chair of the Psychology and Biblical Studies Section of the Society of Biblical Literature. He is co-editor with Dr. Ashcraft of the textbook anthology New Religious Movements: A Documentary Reader. His work has been published in the Journal of Psychology and Christianity, American Imago, Studies in Jewish Civilization 12: Millennialism from the Hebrew Bible to the Present, and the four-volume series Psychology and the Bible. In 2001, he served as an expert witness in a copyright infringement case against the producers of the film “The Omega Code.” 

Ding-hwa Evelyn Hsieh      dhsieh@truman.edu             Ext. 4655
Dr. Hsieh has been at Truman since 1998. She received her doctorate and master’s degrees in East Asian Languages and Cultures from the University of California-Los Angeles and a master’s degree in history from the University of California-Santa Barbara. She received her bachelor’s degree in history from the National Taiwan University. She did two-year postdoctoral research at University of California-Berkeley, and was a visiting scholar in the Women’s Studies Program at Harvard Divinity School. Her current research interests include Zen Buddhism and Buddhist nuns in imperial China. She has a chapter on “Images of Women in Ch'an Buddhist Literature of the Sung Period (960-1279)” in Buddhism in the Sung (University of Hawaii Press, 1999). Her paper “Buddhist Nuns in Sung China” is published in the Journal of Sung-Yuan Studies (SUNY) 30 (2000). She has also contributed a number of articles on Chinese Buddhism to the Encyclopedia of Modern Asia (N. Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2002), Encyclopedia of Buddhism (N. Y.: MacMillan Reference, 2003), and Berkshire Encyclopedia of China (M.A.: Berkshire Publishing Group, forthcoming 2008). And she has published course syllabi (Taoist Tradition, Chinese Religions, Women in Chinese Religions, and Women in Buddhism) on the Web site of the AAR syllabi project: https://www.aarweb.org/syllabus/. She is a member of the American Academy of Religion and National Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi.

Jennifer Jesse           jgjesse@truman.edu            Ext. 4662 
Dr. Jesse joined the Truman faculty in 2000. Dr. Jesse holds a doctorate in religion and literature from the University of Chicago Divinity School, a master’s of divinity from Christian Theological Seminary, a master’s in English literature from Butler University, and a bachelor’s in journalism from Kent State University. Dr. Jesse’s areas of specialization include historical, contemporary and constructive Christian thought; faith and reason; religion and literature; religion and science, and the works of William Blake. She has published articles on religion and science, historical and contemporary liberal religious thought in America, American public theology, radical empiricist epistemology, and Chicago School theologian Shailer Mathews in such journals as the American Journal of Theology and Philosophy; Union Seminary Quarterly Review, and Encounter. She has published dictionary entries and book chapters on radical empiricism, William Adams Brown, Shirley Jackson Case, and Bernard Meland, in the Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers (Thoemmes Press, 2004); Pragmatism, Neo-Pragmatism, and Religion:  Conversations with Richard Rorty, ed. Charley D. Hardwick and Donald A. Crosby (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1997); and New Essays in Religious Naturalism, ed. W. Creighton Peden and Larry E. Axel (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1993). She is also Co-Editor of the American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, recently publishing issues on the theology of Langdon Gilkey, responses to Wentzel van Huyssteen’s 2004 Gifford Lectures, and responses to the theology of Gordon Kaufman. She is an officer of the Highlands Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought, and the American Theological Society (Midwest Division), and a member of the American Academy of Religion, and the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Chad Mohler               chmohler@truman.edu             Ext. 6034 
Dr. Mohler joined the Truman faculty in 1999. Dr. Mohler holds a doctorate degree in philosophy from Princeton University, and a bachelor’s degree in physics and philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. His area of specialization is epistemology, but he also has strong interests in philosophy of science (including the philosophy of quantum mechanics), metaphysics, logic, and philosophy of religion. His current research addresses the extent to which we can trust our own beliefs in situations where those beliefs are at odds with the beliefs of other individuals we generally trust.  Dr. Mohler is a member of the American Philosophical Association and Phi Beta Kappa.

David Murphy                 dgmurphy@truman.edu       Ext. 7246
Dr. Murphy has been at Truman since 1988.  He received his Ph.D. in theology from the University of Chicago.  He holds a M.A.R. from Yale University and a B.A. in philosophy from Calvin College.  As a Fulbright scholar, he was affiliated with the University of Leiden (the Netherlands).  His research interests include contemporary religious thought, theories about religion and ethics, and intersections between theological philosophical, and natural scientific perspective on human nature.  His monograph titled Debates on God and Experience in the Netherlands, 1965-1989 was published by the Catholic Scholars Press in 1993.  During the 1998-1999 academic year, he earned a M. Phil. degree in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.  As a part-time student at the University of Edinburgh, he is working on a dissertation which, upon completion, will result in him receiving a second Ph.D. degree, this one in philosophy.

Brent Orton               borton@truman.edu       Ext. 6029
Dr. Orton holds a PhD in History of Culture from the University of Chicago. His dissertation was on Nietzsche’s aesthetic radicalization of the German Humanist tradition. He also has a BFA in painting and drawing, and an MA in Humanities from Brigham Young University, and is a practicing artist. Click here to see his English Department web page.

Gerald Osborn                gosborn@truman.edu            Ext. 4649
Dr. Osborn joined the Truman faculty in 2004. He received his artium baccalaureatus degree from Wilmington College (Ohio) in 1969 after spending his senior year at Schiller University in Germany. He received his Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree from the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine (KCOM; now A.T. Still University) in 1973 after completing his senior electives at the School of Medicine, University of Sheffield, England. He completed his internship, residency in psychiatry and postdoctoral fellowship at Michigan State University where he remained on the faculty in psychiatry, internal medicine, and history. He received his master’s in history & philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge in 1986. He is one of the founding faculty members of Missouri State University’s Center for Ethics & Humanities in the Life Sciences. He left MSU as a professor emeritus to become the vice president for medical affairs and dean of KCOM. His is a Distinguished Fellow of both the American Psychiatric Association and the American College of Neuropsychiatrists. His clinical research includes the interaction of medical illnesses and psychiatric disorders. His academic research involves the History of Medical Ethics and the History of Healthcare. He is a member of Sigma Sigma Phi (Honors Fraternity for Osteopathic Medicine) and is a past president. He is also a member of Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society.  He is also a psychiatric consultant for the Northeast Missouri Health Council and curriculum consultant for four medical schools.

Lloyd Pflueger             ss57@truman.edu           Ext. 4056 
Dr. Pflueger has been at Truman since 1993. He received his doctorate and master’s in religious studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Washington, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin, California Polytechnic State University, and California State University-Long Beach. He specializes in South Asian religion, classical yoga philosophy, Indian philosophy, and classical Sanskrit. He has 27 articles on Hindu and Buddhist topics in Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, (Oxford, 1997). Also from Oxford, he published a chapter in The Innate Capacity (1998), “Discriminating the Innate Capacity: Salvation Mysticism in Classical Samkhya-Yoga.” Other  publications include: The Bhagavad Gita for Contemporary American Religion (Macmillam, 2000) and in 2003 from Routledge Curzon (London) a chapter, “Dueling with Duelism: Revisioning the Paradox of Purusha and Prakiti, in Yoga: The Indian Tradition.”  More recent publications  include “Person, Purity, and Power in the Yogasūtra,” for Essays on the Theory and Practice of Yoga, Knut Jacobson, Ed.., (Brill) 2005. include an forthcoming article, “Ishvara,” for The Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan).   In the summer of 2007, Dr. Pflueger was chosen to participate in the Freeman Foundation Summer Institute on Japan, for intensive study of Japanese language and culture at Tokai University in Honolulu, Hawaii.  Dr. Pflueger is presently focusing on a research project titled The 1000 Names of the All-pervasive God Vishnu. He is a member of the American Academy of Religion, Phi Kappa Phi, and Phi Beta Kappa, and serves as faculty advisor for Truman’s Art of Living (yoga) Club and the DEPTHS Club. 

Stephen Pollard       spollard@truman.edu         Ext. 4653
Dr. Pollard has been at Truman since 1985. He received his B.A. from Haverford College in 1979 and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas in 1983. His research and publications deal primarily with logic and the philosophy of mathematics, but his interests also include the history of philosophy (particularly Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and C. S. Peirce) and the philosophy of science (both natural and social). Dr. Pollard is the author of Philosophical Introduction to Set Theory (Notre Dame, 1990), co-author of Closure Spaces and Logic (Kluwer, 1996), and co-translator of The Continuum by Herman Weyl (Dover, 1994). His papers have appeared in Analysis, The Monist, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, Noûs, Philosophical Studies, Philosophia Mathematica, Synthese, and other journals.

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