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Humanities & Teacher Education

Meet the Faculty

Photo of Paul Contino

Paul Contino
Blanche E. Seaver Professor of Humanities
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
  • Great Books V: Asian Great Books
  • Dante's Divine Comedy
  • Russian Novel: Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
  • C.S. Lewis
  • Faith and Reason
  • Humanities 212
Key Awards/Affiliations:
  • Howard A. White Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2006
  • 2006 Catholic Press Association Award
  • Valparaiso University Caterpillar Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1997-1998
  • Phi Beta Kappa, 1980
Academic Interests:
  • Classic Texts in the Liberal Arts Tradition
  • Contemporary Catholic Literature
  • Dante
  • Dostoevsky
  • Religion and Literature
Selected Works:
  • Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith, Edited and Introduced with Susan Felch, Northwestern University Press, 2001.
  • "The Catholic Imagination in Fiction." Teaching the Tradition: A Disciplinary Approach to the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. (Oxford University Press, 2011).
  • "Zhuangzi." Finding Wisdom in East Asian Classics. Ed. William Theodore de Bary. (Columbia University Press, 2011).
  • "Introduction: The Pilgrim's Path to Freedom." Dante, The Divine Comedy. Trans. Burton Raffel (Northwestern University Press World Classics Series, Fall, 2010).
  • "Incarnational Realism and the Case for Casuistry: Dmitri Karamazov's Escape." In The Brothers Karamazov: Art, Creativity, and Spirituality. Ed Pedrag Cicovacki and Maria Granik. (Universitatsverlag C. Winter Heidelberg, 2010).
  • "Mansfield Park and Isaiah 53: Fanny Price as Suffering Servant." Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Ed. Eleanor Bourg Donlon. (Ignatius Press Critical Edition, 2010).
  • "Tolstoy." The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization. Ed. George Kurian. Blackwell Publishing 2011.
  • "Dostoevsky." The Encyclopedia of Christian Literature. Ed. George Kurian and James Smith III, Scarecrow Press, 2010.
  • "William Lynch's Christ and Apollo and the Field of Religion and Literature." Religion and Literature 41.2 (Summer, 2009).
  • "Theology Descending: Franz Wright and Mary Karr in Conversation." Moderator of Conversation. Christianity and Literature 58.4 (Summer, 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 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.
  • "Manifestation and Proclamation in Teaching O'Connor's 'Parker's Back.'" The Cresset, Pentecost, 1998.
  • "Dostoevsky and the Ethical Relation to the Prisoner." Renascence: 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.