Faculty Colloquium on The Uses of Idolatry

Mark Alznauer is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and affiliated Faculty in the Department of Religious Studies and Department of German at Northwestern University. Prof. Alznauer. (Ph.D. University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought 2008 specializes in nineteenth century German philosophy.  He is the author of Hegel’s Theory of Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and was the Vice President of the Hegel Society of America (2016-18).  He recently completed a manuscript on Hegel’s mature philosophical system which is tentatively entitled Hegel’s Sole Idea.  He is currently working on a number of projects that have little to no relation to Hegel.

Eric DeVilliers is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the University of Notre Dame and incoming Postdoctoral Fellow in Catholic Studies at the Lumen Christi Institute. Dr. DeVilliers (PhD, Notre Dame, 2024) is a Catholic theologian engaged in the comparative study of early Christianity and Islam. His book manuscript explores the meaning and development of the doctrine of the vision of God (visio beatifica). Working in Arabic, Coptic, Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Turkish, DeVilliers draws on Christian patristic theology, classical Islamic theology, and medieval scholastic thought. His research demonstrates that there is one continuous discourse from Late Antiquity into early Islam in which the Qur’an accepts and reworks several Christian interpretive themes.

Scott Moringiello is Associate professor in the Department of Catholic Studies at DePaul University, where he teaches courses in Catholic theology and religion and literature. He received his PhD from the theology department at the University of Notre Dame, an MPhil from the Divinity Faculty at the University of Cambridge, and a BA (in philosophy and classics) from Williams College (Massachusetts, USA).  He is the author of The Rhetoric of Faith: Irenaeus and the Structure of the Adversus Haereses (The Catholic University of America Press, 2019).

Fr. Patrick Gilger, S.J. is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Loyola University of Chicago and is a priest of the Midwest Province of the Society of Jesus. A graduate of Creighton University, he has been a Jesuit since 2002. Trained in philosophy and theology in addition to sociology (PhD, New School), he now primarily studies social theory, the sociology of religion, and secularity. His current research focuses on how communities of practice cultivate (religious) subjectivities that are difficult to see and hear in a secular age, and how these unique subjectivities cultivate particular “powers of publicity” that can be deployed within an always-already-power-inflected public sphere.

William T. Cavanaugh is professor of Catholic studies and director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame followed by a master’s degree from Cambridge University. He then spent two years working for the Church in a poor area of Santiago, Chile, under the military dictatorship. Upon returning to the United States, he earned a PhD from Duke University and then taught at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota for 15 years before coming to DePaul.

Professor Cavanaugh’s major areas of research have to do with the Church’s encounter with social, political, and economic realities. He is especially interested in the social implications of traditional Catholic beliefs and practices, such as the Eucharist. He has authored six books and edited three more; his books and articles have been published in 10 languages. He has dealt with themes of the Church’s social and political presence in situations of violence and economic injustice.