Carver Cast: Season 1

This week, we sat down with Professor Paul Lim, Associate Professor of the History of Christianity. 

Professor Lim is an award-winning historian of Reformation- and post-Reformation Europe. His latest book, Mystery Unveiled: The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2012), won the 2013 Roland H. Bainton Prize as the best book in history/theology by the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference. He has published two other books in that area: The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism (Cambridge, 2008); and In Pursuit of Purity, Unity, and Liberty: Richard Baxter’s Puritan Ecclesiology in Context (Brill, 2004). 

In addition, history of evangelicalism and global Christianities are his other foci of research.  Currently, he is writing a book on the transformation of global evangelical attitudes toward and endeavors on eradication of human trafficking and structural poverty. 

Professor Lim holds a B.A. from Yale University (1990), an M.Div. from the Biblical Theological Seminary (1995), a Th.M. from Princeton Theological Seminary (1997), and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (2001). 

This is the final episode of The Carver Cast, Season 1. Please stay tuned for Season 2, anticipated in 2021! In the meantime, our team continues to engage with Christian faculty, and you can visit us at www.carverstl.org for updates and other resources. 

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The Carver Cast engages with Christian faculty in higher education and highlights the work of those faculty to bridge connections between university, church, and society. In doing so, it seeks to disrupt the perceptions that Christians are “anti-intellectual” and that higher education is “anti-Christian.” Tune in for a wide-ranging discussion with faculty around the country, with mediocre production quality but excellent content!

Penina Laker and John Inazu are Carver Project faculty fellows and members of the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where Laker is assistant professor of communication design and Inazu is a professor of law and religion.

This week, we sat down with Washington University Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Jill Pasteris, to talk about living out her faith in her scientific field.

Professor Pasteris’ research interests include Biomineralization and Raman spectroscopy of Geological Materials. She holds a PhD from Yale University.

Pasteris collaborates with chemists and materials scientists to compare Raman and infrared (IR) spectra of biological apatite (a calcium phosphate mineral) and its synthetic analogs. The current goal is to understand better how the carbonate ion is incorporated into biological apatite. She also currently is collaborating with colleagues from the School of Engineering to enhance the growth of lead-bearing minerals to form protective mineral scales on the inner walls of lead pipes. The aim is to eliminate the cause of lead poisoning due to the historical use of lead service pipes to bring drinking water into homes in the US.

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The Carver Cast engages with Christian faculty in higher education and highlights the work of those faculty to bridge connections between university, church, and society. In doing so, it seeks to disrupt the perceptions that Christians are “anti-intellectual” and that higher education is “anti-Christian.” Tune in for a wide-ranging discussion with faculty around the country, with mediocre production quality but excellent content!

Penina Laker and John Inazu are Carver Project faculty fellows and members of the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where Laker is assistant professor of communication design and Inazu is a professor of law and religion.

This episode, we talked with Professor Abram Van Engen, Associate Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, about his research on religion and literature. His research focuses especially on seventeenth-century Puritans and the way they have been remembered and remade in American culture.

Van Engen began his career with a study of sympathy in seventeenth-century Puritanism, drawing together abiding interests in the history of emotions, theology, imagined communities, and literary form. Those interests led to his first book, Sympathetic Puritans, and numerous related articles on early American religion and literature.

Beginning with these concerns, Van Engen has moved from a study of the Puritans in their own place and context to an interest in the way Puritans have been recollected and re-used by later generations. Studying the life of texts and the effects of collective memory, Van Engen has produced a second book, The Meaning of America, along with several other publications that together study the creation and curation of American exceptionalism.

Work on his second project was furthered by participation in the Humanities Digital Workshop at Washington University in St. Louis, where Van Engen has been leading a team to study the concept and creation of American exceptionalism through a history of the phrase “city on a hill.” That work has led to multiple related digital projects, all in teams with undergraduate and graduate researchers. Collaboration remains essential to his work, with co-edited journal issues, co-written articles, co-taught courses and working groups that bring together literature, history, religion, politics, and psychology.

Van Engen’s undergraduate courses have included Literature, Spirituality, and Religion (a freshman seminar); Early Texts and Contexts; American Literature to 1865; Natives and Newcomers in Early America; City on a Hill (for American Culture Studies); and Morality and Markets (co-taught with the Business School). Graduate seminars have included Puritanism, Literature and Religion, Intro to Graduate Studies, and Marilynne Robinson.

Van Engen is also the Director of English Graduate Studies as well as an Associate Professor of Religion and Politics (by courtesy). He received his PhD from Northwestern University in 2010. 

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The Carver Cast engages with Christian faculty in higher education and highlights the work of those faculty to bridge connections between university, church, and society. In doing so, it seeks to disrupt the perceptions that Christians are “anti-intellectual” and that higher education is “anti-Christian.” Tune in for a wide-ranging discussion with faculty around the country, with mediocre production quality but excellent content!

Penina Laker and John Inazu are Carver Project faculty fellows and members of the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where Laker is assistant professor of communication design and Inazu is a professor of law and religion.

This week, we sat down with Ruth Lopez Turley, professor of sociology at Rice University. She founded the Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC), a research-practice partnership between Rice University and several Houston area school districts, including the Houston Independent School District. Turley also founded the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships (NNERPP), which supports and develops partnerships between research institutions and education agencies throughout the country. 

Turley has served in various elected and appointed positions in local, state, and national levels. Nationally, she has served in leadership positions in the American Sociological Association (ASA), the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE), and the National Research Council of the National Academies, as well as the editorial boards of Sociology of Education and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Locally, she has served as a Mayor’s Appointee in the Harvey Relief Fund Advisory Board, tasked with disseminating $100M, and is also serving on the Texas State Board of Education’s Long-Range Plan for Public Education Steering Committee.

Turley completed her undergraduate work at Stanford University (1996) and received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University (2001), where she was a doctoral fellow at the Kennedy School of Government’s Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy. Prior to coming to Rice, she was an assistant and associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where she was a faculty affiliate of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER), the Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education Sciences (ITP), and the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP). In 2004, she was a National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellow. 

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The Carver Cast engages with Christian faculty in higher education and highlights the work of those faculty to bridge connections between university, church, and society. In doing so, it seeks to disrupt the perceptions that Christians are “anti-intellectual” and that higher education is “anti-Christian.” Tune in for a wide-ranging discussion with faculty around the country, with mediocre production quality but excellent content!

Penina Laker and John Inazu are Carver Project faculty fellows and members of the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where Laker is assistant professor of communication design and Inazu is a professor of law and religion.

In this episode of the Carver Cast, we interview Professor Peter Feaver (Ph.D., Harvard, 1990), a Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Duke University.

Peter is Director of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy. He is most recently the author of Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations (Harvard Press, 2003) and of Guarding the Guardians: Civilian Control of Nuclear Weapons in the United States (Cornell University Press, 1992). He has published numerous monographs, scholarly articles, book chapters, and policy pieces on grand strategy, American foreign policy, public opinion, nuclear proliferation, civil-military relations, and cybersecurity.

From June 2005 to July 2007, Feaver served as Special Advisor for Strategic Planning and Institutional Reform on the National Security Council Staff at the White House where his responsibilities included the national security strategy, regional strategy reviews, and other political-military issues. In 1993-94, Feaver served as Director for Defense Policy and Arms Control on the National Security Council at the White House where his responsibilities included the national security strategy review, counterproliferation policy, regional nuclear arms control, and other defense policy issues.  He is an emeritus member of the Aspen Strategy Group, blogs at “Elephants in the Room” at ForeignPolicy.com, and is a Contributing Editor to Foreign Policy magazine.

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The Carver Cast engages with Christian faculty in higher education and highlights the work of those faculty to bridge connections between university, church, and society. In doing so, it seeks to disrupt the perceptions that Christians are “anti-intellectual” and that higher education is “anti-Christian.” Tune in for a wide-ranging discussion with faculty around the country, with mediocre production quality but excellent content!

Penina Laker and John Inazu are Carver Project faculty fellows and members of the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where Laker is assistant professor of communication design and Inazu is a professor of law and religion.

Today, we connected with Pablo Tarazaga, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech. His research focuses on the general areas of structural dynamics, vibration, control, testing, adaptive structures and smart materials. Professor Tarazaga received his B.S.M.E. from the University of Puerto Rico in 2002, his M.S. from Virginia Tech in 2004, and his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in 2009.

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The Carver Cast engages with Christian faculty in higher education and highlights the work of those faculty to bridge connections between university, church, and society. In doing so, it seeks to disrupt the perceptions that Christians are “anti-intellectual” and that higher education is “anti-Christian.” Tune in for a wide-ranging discussion with faculty around the country, with mediocre production quality but excellent content!

Penina Laker and John Inazu are Carver Project faculty fellows and members of the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where Laker is assistant professor of communication design and Inazu is a professor of law and religion.

Francis Su writes about the dignity of human beings and the wonder of mathematical teaching.  He is the Benediktsson-Karwa Professor of Mathematics at Harvey Mudd College and a former president of the Mathematical Association of America. In 2013, he received the Haimo Award, a nationwide teaching prize for college math faculty, and in 2018 he won the Halmos-Ford writing award for a speech that inspired his book Mathematics for Human Flourishing (2020). His work has been featured in Quanta Magazine, Wired, and the New York Times.

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The Carver Cast engages with Christian faculty in higher education and highlights the work of those faculty to bridge connections between university, church, and society. In doing so, it seeks to disrupt the perceptions that Christians are “anti-intellectual” and that higher education is “anti-Christian.” Tune in for a wide-ranging discussion with faculty around the country, with mediocre production quality but excellent content!

Penina Laker and John Inazu are Carver Project faculty fellows and members of the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where Laker is assistant professor of communication design and Inazu is a professor of law and religion.

This week's episode features Heidi Kolk, assistant professor at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts and Assistant Vice Provost of Academic Assessment.  Professor Kolk holds an MA and PhD in English and American Literature from Washington University in St. Louis, and a BA in fine arts from Hope College. She serves as a faculty fellow for the Carver Project.

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The Carver Cast engages with Christian faculty in higher education and highlights the work of those faculty to bridge connections between university, church, and society. In doing so, it seeks to disrupt simultaneously perceptions that Christians are “anti-intellectual” and that higher education is “anti-Christian.” Tune in for a wide-ranging discussion with faculty around the country, with mediocre production quality but excellent content!

Penina Laker and John Inazu are Carver Project faculty fellows and members of the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where Laker is assistant professor of communication design and Inazu is a professor of law and religion.

This week's episode features Catherine Crouch, a professor of physics at Swarthmore College and a member of The Carver Project’s Academic Advisory Committee.

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The Carver Cast engages with Christian faculty in higher education and highlights the work of those faculty to bridge connections between university, church, and society. In doing so, it seeks to disrupt simultaneously perceptions that Christians are “anti-intellectual” and that higher education is “anti-Christian.” Tune in for a wide-ranging discussion with faculty around the country, with mediocre production quality but excellent content!

Penina Laker and John Inazu are Carver Project faculty fellows and members of the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where Laker is assistant professor of communication design and Inazu is a professor of law and religion.

Our second episode of the Carver Cast features Associate Professor at the Sam Fox School of Visual Art and Design, John Hendrix.

John Hendrix is a New York Times Bestselling illustrator and author of many children’s books, including Shooting at the Stars, Drawing is Magic, John Brown: His Fight for Freedom, Miracle Man: The Story of Jesus, and, most recently, The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler.  His first picture book, Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek, was named an ALA Notable book of 2008 and won the Comstock Award for read aloud books.  His book on John Brown won the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Seal and was named one of the “Best Books of 2009” by Publisher’s Weekly.

Professor Hendrix has a degree in visual communication from the University of Kansas and an MFA from The School of Visual Arts.  He has taught design at Parsons School of Design and worked at The New York Times as Assistant Art Director of the Op-Ed page.  His work has appeared in publications including Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Esquire, The New York Times, and Time Magazine. He has also drawn book jackets for the likes of Roaring Brook, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins, Greenwillow Books, Knopf, Penguin, and Abrams Books. His images also appeared in advertising campaigns for ESPN/ABC, AT&T, and Travelocity. His drawings have won numerous awards, including Silver Medals from Society of Illustrators in 2006, 2008, and 2015.  In 2012, Professor Hendrix served as President of ICON7- The Illustration Conference, a biennial global summit for the illustration community, as well as Vice President of ICON6 in 2010. He also chaired The Society of Illustrators 55th Annual Show, which is the Illustration industry’s longest running and most prestigious juried show.

Professor Hendrix has served as a Ruling Elder at Grace & Peace Fellowship for eight years, part of the PCA (Presbyterian Church of America). He has presented his work and drawings at venues including Hutchmoot, The Rabbit Room’s Annual Conference of art, music and faith – Church NEXT Conference – Story Conference, Nashville – Q Commons St. Louis, and The National Archives.  His sketchbook drawings from church have been featured in Christianity Today and Smithsonian Magazine. Professor Hendrix lives in St. Louis, with his beautiful bride Andrea, son Jack, and daughter Annie.

Reviewing his 2016 book, Miracle Man, the New York Times wrote that “even nonbelievers will enjoy this powerfully told and visually dazzling book.”