Great Books faculty and scholarship on Christianity

There are currently nine faculty teaching in the Great Books Colloquium: four with tenure appointments to Great Books, and five to other programs. By a coincidence, all faculty tenured to Great Books--Paul Contino, Jessica Hooten Wilson, Tuan Hoang, and John Kern--have centered their scholarship on studying one or more aspects of Christian thought and history. Two other faculty, Jonathan Koch and Jonathan Riddle, specialize in studying Christianity at two different eras and on different subject matters.

• Paul Contino (PhD in literature, University of Notre Dame) is Distinguished Professor of Great Books and a specialist on Dostoevsky, an interest since graduate school. He has published numerous articles and chapters on Dostoevsky, plus the monograph Dostoevsky's Incarnational Realism: Finding Christ among the Karamazov. (It was also translated into Russian.) "Incarnational realism," he explained, "is a theologically-informed way of life in which a person apprehends reality in the light of Christ’s incarnation, and freely acts upon that apprehension." Under his mentorship, two students in Great Books have won the North American Dostoevsky Society Undergraduate Essay Contest: Abby Munzar in 2021 and Natalie Alderton in 2024. 
• Jessica Hooten Wilson (PhD in literature and theology, Baylor University) is the Fletcher Jones Chair of Great Books. A Pepperdine alumna, she majored in creative writing and took the Great Books sequence before earning her master's and doctoral degrees at two institutions in Texas. Her focus is Christian thought in literature as well as reading Christian literature. She has published three co-edited volumes and six monographs, including The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints and Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice. To quote from the latter book, Dr. Hooten Wilson believes that "the simple act of reading can help us learn to pray well, love our neighbor, be contemplative, practice humility, and disentangle ourselves from contemporary idols."
• Tuan Hoang (PhD in history, University of Notre Dame) is currently program director of Great Books and Blanche E. Seaver Professor of Humanities and Teacher Education. In college, he was a philosophy major and theology minor while taking Great Books for general education. He worked for ten years before attending graduate school and studying history. He has since published several journal articles and book chapters on the history of Catholics in Vietnam and Catholic refugees in the U.S. He also co-edits a forthcoming volume called A History of Vietnamese Christianity, and works on a monograph about the experience of Catholics in South Vietnam.
• John Kern (PhD in theology, Boston College) is Assistant Professor of Great Books and Religion, and studied religion as an undergraduate at Abilene Christian University. He earned a master's in religion at the same institution before entering the doctoral program at BC. A specialist of medieval theology, he has published two articles on Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, who were among the most important medieval theologians, if not the most important. He is working to turn his dissertation, entitled "Charismatic Christ, Charismatic Church: The Development of the Gratia Gratis Data in Thomas Aquinas's Theology in Light of the Summa Halensis", into a book manuscript for publication.
• Jonathan Koch (PhD in English, Washington University in St. Louis) is Assistant Professor of English and coordinator of the Digital Humanities minor. A specialist of early modern English literature, he, too, is turning his dissertation into a book manuscript with the tentative title With a Forbearing Spirit: The Poetics of Religious Toleration in Revolutionary England. He has already published two articles on this subject. He is also the faculty advisor to the Pepperdine chapter of the Veritas Forum, which, as stated on the national website, "puts the Christian faith in dialogue with other beliefs and invites participants from all backgrounds to seek truth together." 
• Jonathan Riddle (PhD in history, University of Notre Dame) is Assistant Professor of History and coordinator of the new Health Humanities minor. Another history PhD from University of Notre Dame, he has a background on nineteenth-century American history, especially on subjects of health, medicine, and religion. His book-in-progress is tentatively called Prospering Body and Soul: Health Reform, Liberal Religion, and Capitalism in Antebellum America. It focuses on Christian physiological reformers such as the Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham, whose preaching and involvement with the temperance movement inspired the creation of the Graham cracker.