About

I’m a classically trained theologian, working and thinking outside of religious institutions. I’m interested in the afterlives of things: what happens after things are supposed to be over, in the post-apocalypse. What happens after an institution is hollowed out? When there’s no more cash value? After the solution fails, or the dust settles? What happens next?

I practice ambivalence as a contemplative method. I think of theology as a field that’s filled with contradictions: it’s beautiful and terrible. It harbors an archive that is both generative and dangerous. I want to help people (religious and non-religious) pull the good things they need from that archive, because there are things in there that can help us survive, and reorient our relationship to the past and future.

These are the kinds of things I write about, on Galactic Underworlds. If you’re interested in how I think and talk about religion, this post or this post are good places to start.

About Me

I sometimes describe myself as an archaeologist of the imagination. I’m not nostalgic for the past, and I don’t want to hide in it. But I do want to understand how it moves through me and connects me with the dead and the more-than-human. I’m into wonder, and uncertainty, and cosmic weirdness.

My day job is in academia: I’m an associate professor at Hanover College, a small liberal arts college in southern Indiana. I live in Louisville, Kentucky. I’m also the author of Sister Death: Political Theologies for Living and Dying. I have a forthcoming book about more than human power and the afterlives of theology.

Why Subscribe?

I offer frameworks for making sense of a chaotic world: ideas that might comfort you or challenge you, but will always demand a little thought. I won’t flood your inbox, just your imagination. I send mostly bi-weekly dispatches that will bend your mind in useful directions. But I try to avoid posting unless I really have something to say.