Ann W. Astell is Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to her appointment there in 2007, she was Professor of English at Purdue University, where she also chaired the program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. She is the author of six books on medieval literature: The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (1990), Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth (1994), Chaucer and the Universe of Learning (1996), Political Allegory in Late Medieval England (1999), Joan of Arc and Sacrificial Authorship (2003), and Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages (2006). She is also the editor or co-editor of seven collections of essays, including Levinas and Medieval Literature: The “Difficult Reading” of English and Rabbinic Texts (2009).
Geoffrey Baker is Associate Professor of Humanities at Yale-NUS College, where he teaches courses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century comparative literature. His publications include Realism’s Empire: Empiricism and Enchantment in the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Ohio State University Press, 2009) and articles on political aesthetics and ethics in the work of Nietzsche, Coetzee, Sartre, Beauvoir, and Thomas Mann.
Richard A. Cohen is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute of Jewish Thought and Heritage at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). He is the author of Elevations: The Height of the Good in Rosenzweig and Levinas, Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy: Interpretation after Levinas, and Levinasian Meditations: Ethics, Philosophy, and Religion.
Moshe Gold is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Rose Hill Writing Program at Fordham University where he teaches courses in literary and critical theory, and pedagogy theory and practice. A co-editor of the Joyce Studies Annual, Gold’s own essays on Joyce, Plato, Levinas, Derrida, and the Talmud have appeared in Representations, Joyce Studies Annual, Criticism, James Joyce Quarterly, Levinas and Medieval Literature, and ELH. His work on the Polish director Kieslowski and rabbinic interpretations of the decalogue appears in Of Elephants and Toothaches: Ethics, Politics, and Religion in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue.
David B. Goldstein is Associate Professor of English at York University in Toronto. He is the author of a scholarly monograph, Eating and Ethics in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and a book of poetry, Laws of Rest (BookThug, 2013). His journal articles and book chapters address a range of subjects, including Shakespeare, Levinas, early modern recipe books, eco-criticism, and Martha Stewart’s politics of domesticity. With Amy Tigner, he is currently co-editing the volume Culinary Shakespeare. His numerous fellowships and awards include a 2013 writer’s grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Sandor Goodhart is Professor of English and Jewish Studies at Purdue University, and currently director of the Religious Studies Program. He served as the Director of the Jewish Studies Program (1997-2002), the Philosophy and Literature Program (2005), and the Classical Studies Program (2007-2011). The author of three books on literature, philosophy, and Biblical Studies, including Sacrificing Commentary: Reading the End of Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), The Prophetic Law: Essays in Judaism, Girardianism, Literary Studies, and the Ethical (Michigan State University Press, 2014), and Möbian Nights: Reading, Literature, and Darkness (Bloomsbury, 2017), he is also the co-editor of three books including Sacrifice, Scripture, and Substitution: Readings in Ancient Judaism and Christianity, with Ann Astell (Notre Dame University Press, 2011), and For René Girard: Encounters in Friendship and Truth, with James Williams, Jørgen Jørgenson, and Thomas Ryba (Michigan State University Press, 2009). He served as guest editor for three journal issues (Shofar, Modern Fiction Studies, and Religion) on Emmanuel Levinas and René Girard, and has authored over one hundred essays. The former President of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion (organized around the work of Girard), and founder (along with his graduate students) of the international North American Levinas Society (now in its thirteenth year), he organized with Benoît Chantre a conference at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and École normale supérieure exploring complementarities between the thinking of Girard and Levinas on sacrifice, violence, the ethical, and the sacred.
Hilaire Kallendorf is Director of Graduate Studies, as well as a Professor of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. She was a postdoctoral research fellow at UCLA and an American Council of Learned Societies/Andrew W. Mellon Junior Faculty Fellow. She was awarded a Howard Foundation Mid-Career Fellowship from Brown University and, in 2006, the $50,000 Hiett Prize in the Humanities. She is the author of two books, Exorcism and Its Texts: Subjectivity in Early Modern Literature of England and Spain (University of Toronto Press, 2003) and Conscience on Stage: The Comedia as Casuistry in Early Modern Spain (University of Toronto Press, 2007). She has also published over a dozen articles on such topics as self-exorcism, piety and pornography, ghosts, Taíno religious ceremonies, and Christian humanism in the Renaissance.
Claire Katz is Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. Her work focuses on the intersection of philosophy and religion, with specific interests in contemporary French philosophy and French feminist theory. She is the author of Levinas, Judaism, and the Feminine: The Silent Footsteps of Rebecca (Indiana University Press, 2003) and the editor of Emmanuel Levinas: Critical Assessments vol. 1-4 (Routledge, 2005). She regularly teaches courses in Gender and Religion and Feminist theory and she has written extensively on feminist theory, philosophy of religion, philosophy of education, and Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical project. Her current book length project, tentatively titled, Beyond the Cave: The Paradox of Education and the Return to Jewish Wisdom, explores and responds to theories of education as they emerged in the history of philosophy (e.g., Plato, Locke, Rousseau, Dewey).
Sean Lawrence is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Studies, UBC Okanagan, where he teaches English literature. His previous articles have appeared in The European Journal of English Studies, English Studies in Canada, Renascence and several book collections. He is the author of the first book-length work on Shakespeare and Levinas, Forgiving the Gift: The Philosophy of Generosity in Marlowe and Shakespeare (Duquesne University Press, 2012).
Kent Lehnhof is Professor of English at Chapman University, where he specializes in early modern literature and culture. He has published over a dozen essays on Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. His most recent articles have appeared in Renaissance Drama, Modern Philology, and Shakespeare Bulletin.
Steven Shankman holds the UNESCO Chair in Transcultural Studies, Intercultural Dialogue, and Peace at the University of Oregon. He is the author of two books on Levinas: Other Others: Levinas, Literature, Transcultural Studies (State University of New York Press, 2010) and Turned Inside-Out: Reading the Russian Novel in Prison After Levinas, forthcoming from Northwestern University Press. His earlier books include The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China (2000), co-authored by Stephen Durrant; In Search of the Classic: Reconsidering the Greco-Roman Tradition, Homer to Valéry and Beyond (1994); and Pope’s “Iliad”: Homer in the Age of Passion (1983).
Donald Wehrs is Hargis Professor of British Literature at Auburn University, where he teaches critical theory, comparative literature, postcolonial fiction, and eighteenth-century British studies. He is editor of Levinas and Twentieth-Century Literature (Delaware University Press, 2013), co-editor (with Mark Bruhn) of Cognition, Literature, History (Routledge, forthcoming), co-editor (with David P. Haney) of Levinas and Nineteenth-Century Literature (Delaware University Press, 2009), author of three monographs on Anglophone and Francophone African fiction, and has published essays on Shakespeare in Poetics Today, Modern Philology, and College Literature.