Facebook pixel Paul Contino | Pepperdine University | Seaver College Skip to main content
Pepperdine | Seaver College
Paul Contino Faculty Profile

Paul Contino

Distinguished Professor of Great Books
Humanities/Teacher Education Division, Seaver College
CAC 100

Education

  • PhD, English, University of Notre Dame, 1992
  • MA, University of Notre Dame, 1985
  • BA, Harpur College, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1982

 

Books

  • Dostoevsky's Incarnational Realism: Finding Christ among the Karamazovs. Eugene, OR: Cascade Press / Wipf and Stock Publishers (2020).
  • Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith, Edited and Introduced with Susan Felch, Northwestern University Press (2001).

Articles

  • "Teaching the Theological Dimension of Dante's Divine Comedy." Approaches to Teaching Dante's Comedy. Eds. Christopher Kleinhenz and Kristina Olson. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2020. 
  • "Nadryv in New York: Dostoevskian Laceration in Arthur Miller's The Price." In Arthur Miller's Century, Essays Celebrating the 100th Birthday of America's Great Playwright Ed. Stephen Marino. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017
  • Geoffrey Hill's "Hard-Won Affirmation": The Mystery of the Charity of Charles PĆ©guy, Religions. 2016 (Volume 7, Issue 12). 
  • "Catholic Christianity." The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Religion. Ed. Susan Felch. Cambridge UP, 2016.
  • "The Prudential Alyosha Karamazov: The Russian Realist from a Catholic Perspective." "Dostoevsky and Christianity: Art, Faith, and Dialogue," a special volume of Dostoevsky Monographs, Volume VI. Ed. Jordi Morillas. (St. Petersburg, Russia: Dmitry Bulanin). 2015.
  • "Gleams of Life Everlasting in Alice McDermott's Someone." Christianity and Literature, Summer, 2014.
  • "Stirred into Flame: Monsignor John V. Sheridan." In Not Less than Everything. Ed. Catherine Wolff. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2013.
  • "The Brothers Karamazov." Finding a Common Thread: Reading Great Texts from Homer to O'Connor, Ed. Robert Roberts. (Notre Dame: St. Augustine's Press, 2013.)
  • "Dostoevsky." Entry in The New Catholic Encyclopedia (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).
  • "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.
  • Howard A. White Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2016
  • Howard A. White Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2006
  • Producer and Script Consultant to: The Radical Kindness of Monsignor John V. Sheridan (2014)
  • Winner of 2015 CIMA and Gabriel Awards for Best Documentary
  • 2006 Catholic Press Association Award
  • Valparaiso University Caterpillar Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1997-1998
  • Phi Beta Kappa, 1980

Topics

  • Classic Texts in the Liberal Arts Tradition
  • Contemporary Catholic Literature
  • Dante
  • Dostoevsky
  • Religion and Literature

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 111, 212
  • Religion 301: Christianity and Culture