Faculty 2009-2010
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.”
Neal Delmonico
ndelmoni@truman.edu
Ext 6032
Dr. Neal
Delmonico received his MA (1985) and PhD (1990) in the Department of South Asian
Languages and Civilizations of the University of Chicago. His
dissertation work was on the religious aesthetics of Bengal Vaisnavism. Before
that he received his bachelors' degree from the University of Colorado majoring
in Religious Studies and minoring in Philosophy. His research interests
include Vedanta, Indian Logic, Sanskrit Aesthetics, the Bhakti movements of
North India and the History of Religions. He taught for several years at
Columbia College in Chicago and Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. His numerous
books and articles include: "How to Partake of the Love of Krsna" in Religions
of India in Practice (Princeton, 1995), the Fundamentals of Vedanta: Vedantic
Texts for Beginners (Blazing Sapphire Press, 2006), "Chaitanya Vaishnavism and
the Holy Names" in Krishna: a Sourcebook (Oxford, 2007), and others. He has
most recently completed the republication of the 1904 classic Sri Krsna: the
Lord of Love by Premananda Bharati (Blazing Sapphire Press, 2008), which he
edited, annotated, and provided appendices of supporting materials. Dr
Delmonico belongs to the American Academy of Religion and the Association of
Asian Studies. He also owns and operates a small press that specializes in the
publication of bilingual translations and studies of important texts of the
philosophical, religious, and literary traditions of India.
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. Brent C. 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. Dr. Orton taught general Humanities survey courses, philosophy of art and literature courses, as well as graduate seminars in the Humanities at BYU from 1994 to 2000, and has taught World Literature, literary theory, and JINS 351 (The Faust Tradition) at Truman State University since 2001.
Lloyd Pflueger
ss57@truman.edu
Ext. 4056
Dr. Pflueger has been at Truman since 1993. He received his
doctorate and master’s degrees 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 the 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 (Macmillan, 2000) and in 2003 from Routledge Curzon
(London) a chapter, “Dueling with Dualism: 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), and a 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.