Organizing Commitee and Research Team

Ronald L. Cowan
Ronald L. Cowan, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Radiology & Radiological Sciences. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Biology with an unofficial emphasis in religious studies from Christian Brothers College. In the last half of his undergraduate training, Dr. Cowan also began conducting studies of human sleep physiology. Dr. Cowan enrolled in graduate studies in neuroscience, and was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in Anatomy and Neurobiology from the University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences. He subsequently received a Doctor of Medicine diploma from Cornell University Medical College. Dr. Cowan completed an internship in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, followed by a Residency in Adult Psychiatry at the McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School. At the time Dr. Cowan joined Vanderbilt’s faculty in late 2002 he was an Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Laboratory of Human Neurophysiology at the McLean Hospital’s Brain Imaging Center. His current research employs state of the art magnetic resonance imaging methods to examine the role of molecular level neurobiological processes in influencing higher order human behaviors. Current areas of interest in his laboratory include examining the role of ancient neurochemicals (such as serotonin and dopamine) in human reward function, mood states, and cognition.

 

S. Victoria Greene
S. Victoria Greene is Associate Professor of Physics. Vicki is a member of an elite cadre of physicists who are trying to create and characterize an exotic state of matter called the quark-gluon plasma. The entire universe may have existed in this state 14 billion years ago, a few millionths of a second after the Big Bang, and it may be recreated briefly in the hearts of exploding stars. Greene and her fellow scientists are not ready to proclaim that the $600 million atom smasher, called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), has succeeded in reproducing this primordial plasma in the fiery micro-explosions that it creates by slamming the massive nuclei of gold atoms together at nearly the speed of light. But the results of their last two series of experiments make it highly likely that this is the case.

 

Mark Justad
Mark Justad, (Project Director) is Executive Director, Center for the Study of Religion and Culture, and Senior Lecturer in Religion and Society. Dr. Justad teaches in the area of theology and culture with particular interests in gender, religion and society, and issues of globalization. Mark graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a Bachelor’s of Music degree in theory and composition. He received his M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School and his Ph.D. in Theology from Vanderbilt University. Recent research interests include men’s studies in religion, theology and business, and religion and culture.

 

Research-Only Team

 

M. Shai Cherry
M. Shai Cherry is Mellon Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought . He received his Ph.D. in Jewish thought from Brandeis University in 2001. One area of his research is Jewish responses to biological evolution. “Three Twentieth-Century Jewish Responses to Evolutionary Theory” appeared in the 2003 issue of Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism and he has a forthcoming article entitled “Crisis Management via Biblical Interpretation: Fundamentalism, Modern Orthodoxy and Genesis.” Cherry is currently at work on a book of Jewish interpretations of the Hebrew Bible to be published by the Jewish Publication Society. Cherry frequently lectures in adult education settings and has been the Mellon Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought at Vanderbilt University since 2001.

 

Lenn E. Goodman
Lenn E. Goodman, Professor of Philosophy. His philosophical interests center on metaphysics and ethics, and he has paid special attention over the years to Islamic and Jewish philosophical thought and their creative interactions. He has written philosophical essays on most of the major figures of Islamic and Jewish philosophy and on a variety of topics in political philosophy, biophilosophy, and the theory of knowledge and culture. He serves on the editorial boards of Philosophy East and West, Medieval Philosophy and Theology and Asian Philosophy, and has served on the board of History of Philosophy Quarterly and as Vice President and Program Chair of the Institute for Islamic/Judaic Studies. He is also program chair for the APA panels of the Academy for Jewish Philosophy He was Jewish Philosophy subject editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy , is a fellow of the Academy for Jewish Philosophy, and he edits the Brown Judaic Studies series Medieval Approaches to Judaism. Professor Goodman has also contributed to the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, the Blackwell's Companion to the Philosophy of Religion, the Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy, as well as other works of reference. His most recently completed book is In Defense of Truth: A Pluralist Approach, to be published by Humanity Press. Professor Goodman is currently hard at work on God and Evolution for Routledge Publishing.

 

Thomas A. Gregor
Thomas A. Gregor, Professor and Chair of Anthropology. His interests include psychological anthropology, gender roles and sexuality, peace and aggression, psychoanalysis and culture, native peoples of South America and anthropological film. He earned the Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology in 1962 from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University in 1969. He came to Vanderbilt University in 1975 as an associate professor of anthropology and was promoted to full professor in 1985. Gregor was one of the founders of the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Science and has been department chair since its inception. Gregor has received major fellowships and research grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the United States Institute for Peace, among others. He has worked as a film maker for the BBC, Grenada Television and NET in making the television films Mehinaku, We are Mehinaku, Feathered Arrows and Dreams from the Forest. He is the author of Mehinaku: The Drama of Daily Life in a Brazilian Indian Village and Anxious Pleasures: The Sexual Lives of an Amazonian People. His edited books include A Natural History of Peace and The Anthropology of Peace and Nonviolence (coedited). Professor Gregor is currently completing a book on peaceful relations among tribes in Central Brazil, and a coedited volume comparing the cultures of Amazonia and Melanesia.

 

Michael P. Hodges
Michael P. Hodges, Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department. Professor Hodges works in the areas of Wittgenstein, American Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, and Philosophy of Education. Recent projects include a series of papers on transcendence and a book on philosophy of education. His scholarly work often dwells at the intersection of philosophy and religion. In a recent interview he spoke of such connections: “One of the ways you come to philosophy is out of an interest in religious questions. As Kant said, the three big questions are God, freedom, and immortality. And it turns out that Wittgenstein has some very interesting things to say about religion and religious truth, particularly in Culture and Value. Also, I have done much work with Kierkegaard, whom I find to be a fascinating phenomenologist of religious experience….I am influenced here by Paul Tillich, among others, and by Dewey's little book, A Common Faith.”

 

Leonard M. Hummel
Leonard M. Hummel is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Pastoral Theology. Professor Hummel's research interests include Pietism and Practical Theology, Community Psychology, consolation for suffering within the Lutheran tradition, and research methods in pastoral theology. He teaches courses in the following areas: Religion and Coping, Pastoral Care for Addictions and Mental Disorders, Health and Salvation, Practical Theology and Historical Theology. An ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Professor Hummel is advisor to Lutheran students at the Divinity School.

 

Gary Jensen
Gary Jensen, Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department. Professor Jensen earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Washington in 1972. Prior to Vanderbilt, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and progressed from Assistant Professor to Full Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Arizona. His most recent research addresses the process of making macro-micro transitions in criminological theory (Gary F. Jensen and Ronald L. Akers. 2003. “Micro-macro Transitions in Criminological Theory: Taking Social Learning Global.” In Social Learning and the Explanation of Crime: New Directions for a New Century. Ronald L. Akers and Gary F. Jensen (Editors). Transaction Publishers) and problems involving “fractal” scales in test of historical theories (Gary F. Jensen 1997. “Time and Social History: Problems of Atemporality in Historical Analysis with Illustrations from Research on Early Modern Witch Hunts.” Historical Methods (Winter): 46-58). He has published over forty articles or chapters on topics in criminology and was recently installed as a Fellow of the America Society of Criminology. He is currently near completion of a monograph about early modern witch hunts and is working on the development of a theory of paranormal beliefs that can be tested at several levels of analysis.

 

John A. McCarthy
John A. McCarthy, Professor of German & Comparative Literature and Co-Director of German Studies. He has also served as Director of Graduate Studies in German (1991-92, 1994-98) and as Director of Undergraduate Studies (1999-2001). He has held visiting professorships at Swarthmore College, the Universität München, and most recently was the Charlotte M. Craig Visiting Professor at Rutgers University (spring 2001). He has received various fellowships (Fulbright, DAAD, APS, DFG). McCarthy teaches courses on literary movements (Enlightenment, Sensibility, Sturm und Drang, Weimar Classicism), on Goethe's Faust, eighteenth-century prose, Nietzsche's impact on literature, on science and literature (chaos and complexity theory), and on the essay as an art form. His research interests also extend to the history of Germanics, the institutionalization of literature, the theory and practice of censorship, empirical readership studies, and the nature of creativity. Currently, McCarthy is completing a book on science, philosophy, and literature and has begun the research for his next major project: the reception of the Sturm-und-Drang movement, 1770-1990. McCarthy is Senior Editor of the Lessing Yearbook, serves on the editorial boards of the German Quarterly and Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Arbeitsstelle Lessing-Rezeption (Kamenz) and the Dresden U Series "18. Jahrhundert." He has served as Vice-President (1995-97) and President (1997-99) of the International Lessing Society. From 1996-1999 he was first a member then chair of the Modern Language Association Advisory Committee on Foreign Languages and Literatures. Currently, he serves on the MLA Selection Committee for the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for German Studies.

 

Sohee Park
Sohee Park, Associate Professor of Psychology and an affiliate of the Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience (CICN). Her research is focused on elucidating neurobiological bases of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. “In my lab, we use neuroimaging and cognitive methods to examine psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, perceptual abnormalities, attention impairments and disordered thought. We collaborate with neurophysiologists who record from single cells in nonhuman primates in the prefrontal cortex to cross-link the same phenomena at different levels of analysis. We have been able to establish that some symptoms of schizophrenia have clear neurobiological bases and that there are signs of anatomical abnormalities. What is not so clear is how we can begin to explain the intense subjective phenomena of delusions that center around spirituality. Many schizophrenic subjects have delusions that are based around their religion. Many hear god(s) or spirits talking to them. Many believe that they were chosen by God. Some believe that they have supernatural powers and indeed that they are God. Some patients are intensely spiritual. Preliminary analysis suggests that left temporal cortical abnormalities may be correlated with hyper-religiosity. However, normal individuals also experience varying degrees of spiritual feelings. We do not understand why this feeling of spirituality is universal across our species, whether ill or well. So, one aim of our laboratory is to better elucidate the neural correlates of spiritual experience in relation to personality and clinical profiles in normal and psychotic individuals.”

 

Jeffrey D. Schall
Jeffrey D. Schall, E. Bronson Ingram Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience (CICN). Dr. Schall and his research team seek to elucidate the neural mechanisms that guide and control movements of the eyes. The activity of individual or ensembles of neurons is recorded in macaque monkeys performing a variety of tasks that are motivated by theories of perception and cognition. One research program aims to understand how the brain selects the target for an eye movement. Visual search or visual masking tasks are used to present target and non target stimuli. They have found that neurons in the frontal eye field select the target for covert shifts of attention and overt shifts of gaze. Current work is investigating the visual and cognitive influences on this selection process and how it relates to the preparation and generation of the eye movement. Another research program aims to understand how the brain regulates when to initiate a voluntary movement. A countermanding task requires subjects to control initiation of a movement if a stop signal is presented. Three major discoveries have been made: First, movements are initiated when the magnitude of activity of certain neurons reaches a fixed threshold. The random variability of behavioral response time arises from differences in the time the neural activity reaches the threshold. Second, neurons in frontal eye field that carry only visual signals do not participate in the control of action, but neurons in that carry motor or fixation signals do generate signals sufficient to control gaze. Third, neurons in the supplementary eye field and anterior cingulate cortex register errors and success in the context of conflict. These observations provide new insights into how the brain makes decisions and controls actions.

 

Michael P. Stonem
Michael P. Stonem, Associate Professor of Chemistry. Stone began working at Vanderbilt as a beginning researcher 17 years ago. He was hired to maintain Vanderbilt’s first high-field nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, an instrument that is central to his own research. One aspect of his studies concerns the effects that the fungal toxin, aflatoxin B1, have on the structure of DNA and, in turn, how these effects change the way in which the genetic information encoded on DNA is expressed. Close partners in his research are Thomas M. Harris, Centennial Professor of Chemistry, and his wife, Associate Professor of Chemistry Constance M. Harris. Their laboratory synthesizes chemical compounds, called oligonucleotides, used in Dr. Stone's work. In addition to aflatoxin, researchers in his lab also study the effects that a number of different toxic chemicals have on DNA. These include: the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons found in charred meat and automobile exhaust; malondialdehyde produced by the decomposition of fatty substances in the body; and, butadiene and styrene, feedstocks used in large quantities by the plastics and rubber industries.

 

David Weintraub
David Weintraub, Associate Professor of Astronomy. Although he graduated from Yale with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and astronomy, Weintraub acknowledges that he really majored in gymnastics, spending 25 hours a week in the gym. He became Ivy League Champion and New England Champion in several events but never made it to the nationals. After he graduated in 1980, Weintraub gave some thought to astronomy, but wasn’t certain it was right for him. Instead he enrolled as a doctoral student in the department of earth and space sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles. There he got interested in the question of how planets form. Weintraub’s fascination with the process of planet formation carried him through his graduate work and he received his doctorate in 1989. After finishing up at UCLA, Weintraub went to the University of Florida for a post-doctoral fellowship before coming to Nashville. He chose Vanderbilt because of its emphasis on teaching as well as research. “Vanderbilt is a perfect place for me because, unlike most research universities, it takes teaching seriously,” he says. So, in addition to continuing to study the process of planet formation and supervising doctoral students, Weintraub enjoys teaching introductory astronomy, has designed an award-winning course on science and religion and has been recognized for his efforts outside the classroom to improve the relationship between faculty and students.