Humanities & Teacher Education
Meet the Faculty

Paul Contino
Professor of Great Books
Editor, Christianity and Literature
Division: Humanities/Teacher Education Division
Office: Cultural Arts Center (CAC) 100
Phone: (310) 506-4096
E-mail: paul.contino@pepperdine.edu
- Ph.D., English, University of Notre Dame, 1992
- M.A., University of Notre Dame, 1985
- B.A., Harpur College, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1982
Courses:
- Great Books Colloquium I, II, III, IV
- Russian Novel: Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
- Great Books V: Asian Great Books
- Dante's Divine Comedy
- C.S. Lewis
- Faith and Reason
Key Awards/Affiliations:
- Howard A. White Award for Excellence in Teaching (2006)
- Selected by Who's Who Among America's Teachers. 2000, 2006
- 2006 Catholic Press Association Award
- Dean's Summer Research Grant, 2004, 2005, 2006
- Mortar Board/Alpha Phi Omega Professor of the Year Award for Christ College, 1999
- Valparaiso University Caterpillar Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1997-1998
- Grant from the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship to Co-edit a book-length collection of essays of "Religious Dimensions in the Thought of Mikhail Bakhtin," 1996
- Valparaiso University Reasearch Professor, 1995-1996, 2000, 2001
- Summer Research Grant from the Valparaiso University Committee on Creative Work and Research, 1994
- Alpha Lambda Delta Professor of the Year Award for Teaching Excellence, 1993
- Religious Approaches to Literature division representative to the Modern Language Association's Delegate Assembly, 1991
- Special Editor of special issue of Religion and Literature, "Religious Thought and Contemporary Critical Theory, 1990
- Phi Beta Kappa, 1980
- Full Scholarship to participate in the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies Workshop in Christianity and Literary Theory at Princeton
Academic Interests:
- Ethical reflection and the novel
- Great Books
- Nineteenth-century novel
- Religion and Literature
Selected Works:
- Zhuangzi as an Exemplary Classic. In Classics for an Emerging Wolrd: Proceedings of a Conference on Liberal education and the Core Cirriculum. Ed Wm. Theodore de Bary, Shang Wei, and Rachel E. Chung. Columbia University, 2009.
- Interview with Alice McDermott. Image, December, 2006.
- Descend That You May Ascend': Augustine, Dostoevsky, and the Confessions of Ivan Karamazov. Augustine and Literature. Ed. Robert Kennedy, Kim Paffenroth, and John Doody. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Press, 2006
- This Writer's Life: Irony and Faith in the Work of Tobias Wolff. Commonweal, October 21, 2005.
- Essays on Larry Woiwode's Beyond the Bedroom Wall and Jean Sulivan's Eternity My Beloved in Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature Ed. Mary R. Reichardt (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004
- Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov and the Idea of a Christian University, in Universality and History: Foundations of the Core (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002).
- Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith, Edited and Introduced with Susan Felch, Northwestern University Press (August, 2001).
- The Lutheran Reader, "Preface," Edited with David Morgan, Valparaiso University, 1999.
- Andre Dubus's Eucharistic Imagination. Religion and the Arts Volume 6:1/2 2002.
- Dostoevsky and the Prisoner. Literature and the Renewal of the Public Sphere Eds. Susan VanZanten Gallagher and M.D. Walhout. NY: St. Martins's Press, 2000.
- Manifestationa and Proclamation in Teaching O'Connor's 'Parker's Back.' The Cresset, Pentecost, 1998.
- Dostoevsky and the Ethical Relation to the Prisoner. Renaiscence: Essays on Values in Literature, Summer, 1996.
- On the Interdisciplinary Field of Religion and Literature. PMLA, Forum, March, 1996.
- Zosima, Mikhail, and the Prosaic Confessional Dialogue in The Brothers Karamazov. Studies in the Novel, Spring, 1995.
- Introduction, Special issue of Religion and Literature, Religious Thought and Contemporary Critical Theory. Summer/Autumn 1990.
- Review of Francis C. Rossow, Gospel Patterns in Literature, Concordia Journal, 2009
- Review of Rowan Williams, Dostoevsky, America, March 2, 2009
- Review of Michael Dirda, Classics for Pleasure, America, February 18, 2008
- Review of Alice McDermott's After This, America, October 9, 2006
- Review of Kim Paffenroth's In Praise of Wisdom. Augustinian Studies 37.2 (2006)
- Review of Peter Hawkins' Dante's Testaments. Religion and Literature 37.2 (Summer 2005)
- Review of Gil Meilaender's Working, Lee Hardy's Fabric of this World, and Gary Badcock's Way of Life in the Special Issue on "Vocation," Christian Reflection: A Series in Faith and Ethics. 2004.
- Review of Peter Hawkins' Dante's Testaments in Religion and Literature 37:2 (2005)
- Review of Galin Tihanov's The Master and the Slave: Lukacs, Bakhtin, and the Ideas of their Time. Comparative Literature Studies41:2 (2004).
- Review of Jean Sulivan's Eternity, My Beloved, in The Cresset Christmas-Epiphany, 2000-2001.
- Review of Marina Kostalevsky's Dostoevsky and Soloviev and Russian Religious Thought (Ed. By Judith Deutsch Kornblatt and Richard F. Gustafson), in Religion and Literature 32:1 (2000).
- Review of Dianne Oenning Thompson's The Brothers Karamazov and the Poetics of Memory, in Religious Studies Review (1995).
- Review of Walter Reed's Dialogues of the Wold: the Bible as Literature and Bakhtin, in The Cresset (April, 1994).
- Review of Jean Sulivan's Morning Light and The Sea Remains, in The Cresset, (October, 1992).
- Review of Robert Coles' The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination, in The South Bend Tribune (1989).
- Review of Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist's Mikhail Bakhtin in Religion and Literature, 19:2 (1987).
- Review of Contemporary Literary Theory: A Christian Appraisal, in Religious Studies Review (1994).