Faculty Contributors
Dr. Jeffrey Brackett
Jeff Brackett is an associate professor of religious studies at Ball State University, where he teaches courses in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, religion and pop culture, world religions, and ethnography of religion. In the spring of 2015, he combined his interests in pedagogy and art by teaching a fifteen credit-hour immersive learning seminar, “Representing Religion in Comics.” His current projects include transforming his translation of D. B. Mokashi’s Marathi novel, Ananda Owari, into a graphic novel that he is drawing; and a study of “Spiritual-But-Not-Religious” in the Art World.
Dr. David Concepción
David W. Concepción is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Ball State University. Dave grew up in Berkeley, CA, but for some reason people think he is from Maine. He teaches ethics classes and leads BSU students in the production of Stance. He writes about teaching, especially diversity and inclusion. He is on the board of directors of the American Philosophical Association. His dogs “Pig” and “Gillis,” think he spends too much time away from home.
Dr. Jeffry Fry
Jeff Fry is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ball State University. His current research interests lie at the intersection of the philosophy of sport, the philosophy of mind, neurophilosophy, and ethics. He once went ten consecutive years without missing a day of running at least two miles a day.
Dr. Kibujjo Kalumba
Kibujjo M. Kalumba, Associate Professor of Philosophy, completed his undergraduate studies in his native Uganda and earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Indiana University. He has taught philosophy at Ball State University for over 30 years, focusing on African Philosophy as well as Social and Political Philosophy. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Philosophia Africana, a premier international journal of African Philosophy, a position he has held for the last 10 years.
Dr. Jason Powell
Jason is an intellectual historian whose concentration is the history of philosophy and literature. He has taught courses on Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard, and has written on these subjects for his book, Becoming the Lost Generation. In the spirit of Kierkegaard, Jason named his son Søren, who is a junior at Ball State University.
Dr. Matthew Hotham
Dr. Matthew R. Hotham [Hoe-Thumb] is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Ball State where he teaches on Islam, The Qur‘an, World Religions, as well as advanced seminars on Animals and Religion, Religion, Colonialism and Modernity, and Islamic Mysticism. His research and teaching focus on embodied, affective, and material approaches to the study of religion. His classes incorporate role-playing, case studies, music, scents, religious objects, and visits to the David Owsley Museum of Art to encourage students to think about religions as lived and living traditions that invite a diversity of embodied human engagements and responses. In his free time he writes poetry and travels.
Jen Rowland
Jen Rowland teaches Ethics and Environmental Ethics at Ball State University, and she is the recipient of the Lawhead Award for outstanding teaching in the core curriculum. She's a PhD candidate, working on a dissertation about climate change ethics and fossil fuels. Her research interests include environmental justice, energy policy, and that thing where you know you it's bad to do something but you do it anyway. Jen is better than you at Tetris, but worse than you at volleyball.
Dr. Juli Thorson
Juli Thorson grew up in Colorado and spent more time hiking in the mountains than in class. She eventually went to Seattle and received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Washington. She came to Ball State right out of graduate school and promptly made lots of teaching mistakes. But she learned and is now an award-winning philosophy teacher. She has published papers in epistemology, feminism, and pedagogy, but you can look them up at the library so they are not worth listing here. She also maintains a studio where she paints and draws absurd and not-so-absurd art.