Undergraduate Curriculum

Timothy Brennan is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and holds a doctorate in political science from Boston College. His research focuses on the history of political thought, especially Enlightenment and American political thought. He has published articles in Political Theory, History of Political Thought, Interpretation, the Review of Politics, History of European Ideas, The European Legacy, and the Journal of Politics, and is currently revising a book manuscript. Before joining the University of Austin, he taught at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Virginia. He is originally from Sydney, Australia.

Fr. Maximos Constas previously served as a professor and Interim Dean of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. He completed his PhD in Patristics and Historical Theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. (1993), after which he taught at Hellenic College and Holy Cross (1993-1998). In the fall of 1998, he was invited to join the faculty of Harvard Divinity School, where he was Professor of Patristics and Orthodox Theology from 1998-2004. Fr. Maximos resigned from his position at Harvard to respond to a life-long calling to monastic life and was tonsured a great-schema monk at the Holy Monastery of Simonopetra, where he lived from 2004-2011.

Fr Maximos is the author of Maximos the Confessor, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to the Questions of Thalassios (2019); St John Chrysostom and the Jesus Prayer: A Contribution to the Study of the Philokalia (2019); and The Light of the World: Prayers to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2020). He has also written numerous scholarly articles, including “Dionysius the Areopagite and the New Testament” in the Oxford Handbook of Dionysius the Areopagite (2022); “Attentiveness and Digital Culture,” in Theology and Praxis from Late Byzantium to Modernity (2022); “The Theology of the Icon” in The Icon; and “Saints and Elders of Mount Athos” in the Routledge Handbook of Mt Athos (both forthcoming in 2023). His most recent book is a critical edition and English translation of the tenth-century Life of the Virgin Mary by John Geometres published by Harvard University Press, earlier this year.

Boris Fishman is the author of the novels A Replacement Life (which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the American Library Association’s Sophie Brody Medal) and Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and Savage Feast, a family memoir told through recipes, all from HarperCollins, which will also publish his new novel, The Unwanted, in 2025. He has taught creative writing at Princeton University and the University of Montana, and has contributed journalism to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure (where he is a contributing writer), Saveur, Food & Wine, The American Scholar, New York Magazine, Politico, and many other publications.

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Professor Patrick Gray is UATX's Dean of the Center for Arts and Letters. Previously, Gray served as Director of Liberal Arts at Durham University, where he was responsible for designing and introducing a new interdisciplinary core curriculum in the humanities. Before taking up his appointment at Durham, Gray taught comparative literature at Deep Springs College and the United States Military Academy at West Point. Gray is the author of Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic, editor of Shakespeare and the Ethics of War, and co-editor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Ethics and Shakespeare and Montaigne.

“We will give students a structured introduction to the full scope of human civilization and history and art.”

Clay Greene is a scholar of early modern literature and thought. He received his Ph.D. in English and Renaissance Studies at Yale. His work focuses on the literary, philosophical, and historical inheritances of early modern Greece and Rome

Dr. Greene’s scholarly interests lie in early modern England's literary and intellectual culture, especially from the 1650s through the 1750s. Within that broad framework, he studies the intersections of philosophy, theology, and poetry, with a focus on the poetic work of John Milton. His dissertation project covered the revival of the Platonic doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul among English poets and philosophers, arguing that this revival constituted a genuine religious movement of significance. He is fascinated by how individual moral and spiritual considerations always take place against a complete background of metaphysical assumptions about the nature and significance of reality. No era better exemplifies this fact than the late seventeenth century, a time when the “world pictures” of entire societies were in radical flux. Recently, his interests have shifted from the metaphysical to the physical, focusing on the imagination of warfare in early modernity. Still, even here, the focus remains on how beliefs about war crucially depend upon general beliefs about man’s role in the cosmic drama of creation.

Dr. Greene’s next project is a study of the relationship between epic poetry and warfare, focusing on the sublime poetics of physical size and power. "Paradise Lost" is at the center of that study, which also includes William Davenant’s "Gondibert," John Dryden’s "Annus Mirabilis," and short works by Joseph Addison and Aphra Behn.

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Dr. Ryan Haecker is a theologian and philosopher whose research in systematic and historical theology explores the absolute theological questions of logic, science, and technology. He has recently been appointed as Assistant Professor of Theology at the University of Austin. He is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. He is a member of the European Academy of Religions, a reviewer for Reviews of Religion and Theology, and serves on the editorial board of the journal Religions. He was in April 2022 awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Theology and Religious Studies from Peterhouse, University of Cambridge. His doctoral dissertation, supervised by Rowan Williams, 'Restoring Reason: Theology of Logic in Origen of Alexandria', explores theological interpretations of logic or ‘theology of logic’ in Origen of Alexandria, for the Church Fathers, and for modern Christian theology. During his fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, he will prepare to publish his doctoral dissertation in the new Alber Verlag book series on Trinitarian Ontology. He has previously studied history, philosophy, and theology at the University of Texas, the University of Würzburg, and the University of Nottingham. He has published 46 articles in journals, as book chapters, and as book reviews, including 7 high-impact and peer-reviewed journal articles in journals, including Religions, Noesis, and the Journal of the Oxford Graduate Theological Society. He has presented over 138 papers and talks at conferences around the world. In September 2019, he led the organization of the international and ecumenical 'New Trinitarian Ontologies' Conference at the University of Cambridge. And he has frequently been interviewed by the BBC, the Cambridge Festival, and for online podcasts. His research interests extend across a wide range of subject areas, centering on Trinitarian Ontology, Philosophy of Logic, Platonism, Patristics, and German Idealism. He has written an unpublished monograph 'Analogy and Dialectic: A Genealogy of the Trinity'. He is currently editing a forthcoming book 'New Trinitarian Ontologies', and hopes in the future to inaugurate a new field of research in the theology of logic as a contribution to the development of Christian and Trinitarian Ontology.

Kirsten Hall Herlin graduated from Hillsdale College and completed her PhD in English at the University of Texas at Austin. Before coming to the University of Austin, she served as the Director of the Literature Program at Ave Maria University. She is currently the Managing Editor of the Genealogies of Modernity Journal. Her research focuses on religion and eighteenth-century British literature, and her work has been published in academic journals such as Modern Philology, Renascence, and Notes & Queries. She has also appeared as a guest on National Review’s podcast The Great Books and has written articles for The Weekly Standard and The New Atlantis.  

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J. Michael Hoffpauir is Assistant Professor of Political Theory in Intellectual Foundations and Polaris Administrator. Previously, Hoffpauir taught in the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, at Hillsdale College, and in the Lyceum Program in political and economic thought at Clemson University, where he also served as the program’s Associate Director. He has also taught in the Hudson Institute Political Studies program and in the America Enterprise Institute’s 1789 Fellowship in American Political Thought & Modern Practice.

Hoffpauir’s research interests include ancient and modern political thought, statesmanship, and the American founding. He is the author of Between Socrates and the Many: A Study of Plato’s Crito, and he is currently preparing a book manuscript, Vengeance as Justice. Hoffpauir received a B.A. in Political Science from Louisiana State University, an M.A. in Political Science from Boston College, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Claremont Graduate University.

Professor Jacob Howland is Dean of UATX’s Intellectual Foundations program, which comprises the first two years of our undergraduate curriculum. Previously, Howland served as McFarlin Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tulsa and Senior Fellow at the Tikvah Fund. He is the author of five books and one edited book, including two on Plato’s Republic as well as studies of Kierkegaard and the Talmud. Howland’s articles have appeared in The New Criterion, City Journal, and The Nation, among others.

“We aspire to form graduates who are exemplary selves in the Socratic sense: active, reflective, confident individuals and responsible citizens.”

Morgan Marietta is Dean of the Center for Economics, Politics & History. Prior to joining the University of Austin, he taught at the University of Massachusetts Lowell for eleven years and served as Chair of Political Science (briefly) at the University of Texas at Arlington. He studies the political consequences of belief, focusing on constitutional politics, political psychology, and facts in politics. He is the author of four books, including A Citizen’s Guide to American Ideology, A Citizen’s Guide to the Constitution and the Supreme Court, The Politics of Sacred Rhetoric: Absolutist Appeals and Political Persuasion, and most recently One Nation, Two Realities: Dueling Facts in American Democracy. His studies of contemporary politics, including absolutist rhetoric, ideological premises, the rhetoric of reality, and the role of hubris have appeared in the leading journals in political science, including the Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, and the American Political Science Review. He is the founding editor of the annual SCOTUS series at Palgrave Macmillan on the major rulings of the Supreme Court and is a regular commentator on constitutional politics. His current book project is The Supreme Court of Facts, on the role of the Court in addressing disputed perceptions of reality.

“At the University of Austin, no one will be shouted down but they might be shown to be wrong.”

Eliah Overbey comes to UATX from her position as a research associate at Weill Cornell Medicine. She studies changes in astronaut health during spaceflight with an emphasis on genomic measurements. Her most recent project analyzed genomic changes in astronauts from the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission, and she is currently working on data analysis and sample collection for the Axiom-2 and Polaris Dawn missions. Her work launched the Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA), an online portal with the largest compendium of molecular measurements from astronauts. She also serves as Vice Chair of the Cornell Aerospace Medicine Biobank (CAMbank), which is the first biorepository of samples from commercial astronauts, and as Chief Scientific Officer at BioAstra, a nonprofit developing healthcare systems for astronauts. Dr. Overbey received a B.S. in Computer Science from UC San Diego and her Ph.D. in Genome Sciences from the University of Washington.

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Alex Priou received a Ph.D. and M.A. in Philosophy from Tulane University, an M.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Connecticut.

Priou is the author of three books on Plato: "Becoming Socrates: Political Philosophy in Plato’s Parmenides" (2018), "Defending Socrates: Political Philosophy Before the Tribunal of Science" (2023), and "Musings on Plato’s 'Symposium'" (2023). He has also written essays on the history of philosophy for various journals and edited volumes in Classics, Philosophy, Political Science, Literature, and Film, including studies of Homer, Hesiod, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, and beyond. He also engages in public scholarship, occasionally writing for a general audience, but most frequently with The New Thinkery, a weekly podcast he co-hosts with his two close friends, Gregory McBrayer and David Bahr. Together, they aim to model friendly and fun conversations between friends on texts and topics in the history of philosophy.

Priou is currently at work on a book on Plato’s Republic that will offer a comprehensive overview of its drama that situates the characters, with all their hopes, opinions, and commitments, in the context of the political events that have shaped them. He hopes to show how Socrates’ investigation of the good life amid the political and moral decline of imperial Athens can serve as a model for us today, confronted as we are by similar circumstances. After that, he plans to resume work on a non-historical study of the nature of civilization and barbarism intended for a more general, educated audience.

Isabella Reinhardt works on Greek thought of the 5th-century BC. She received her PhD in Classics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2021. Before taking up her position at UATX, she was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University. Her research focuses on Greek tragedy, particularly the dramas of Aeschylus, and presocratic philosophy. Isabella’s current book project, Absent Present: Language and Concept in Early Greek Thought, examines the link the between abstract knowledge and language in 5th-century Greece. A forthcoming article from Classical World argues that we may find traces of Parmenidean thought in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, and that these traces provide insight into the play’s presentation of human knowledge, human suffering, and divine causation.

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Professor David Ruth is Dean of UATX's Center for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Previously, Ruth held several leadership positions as a Permanent Military Professor of Mathematics at the United States Naval Academy, where he was an award-winning teacher from 2009 until 2022. Ruth has authored several articles in a variety of statistics journals, as well as a book chapter on mathematics in cybersecurity. Prior to his academic work, Ruth led and served as a naval officer with operational experience in submarine and surface warfare, nuclear power, oceanography, and meteorology.

“I love quantitative thinking but I love people even more, and I’m excited to be at a place where those two loves are going to join.”

The Chair is intended to advance the study of censorship and the technological, political, economic, and cultural conditions that lead to the suppression of speech. By exposing students to historical and recent manifestations of censorship, the Chair will facilitate the responsible exercise of free speech in a pluralistic society.

Michael Shellenberger is a best-selling author, a publisher of the Twitter files, and a pro-human environmentalist. He has broken a number of major stories, including San Francisco's supervised drug consumption site and cash incentives for homelessness, FBI misinformation about the Hunter Biden laptop, climate pseudoscience and climate anxiety, and more. As a leading expert on the suppression of speech who testifies and advises governments worldwide, Michael is uniquely qualified to lead UATX in its studies of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech.

“The University of Austin has a mission focused on free and open inquiry, and we want to revitalize that open inquiry, that open debate.”

Dr. Mike Shires is Chief of Staff, Vice President for Strategic Initiatives, and Professor of Economics & Public Policy at the University of Austin.

Azadeh Vatanpour is a PhD candidate at Emory University. She holds an MA in Ancient Iranian Culture and Languages from Shiraz University, an MA in Folk Studies, and an MA in Religious Studies from Western Kentucky University. As a scholar of religion and minority studies, her research focuses on ethno-religious minority groups in the Middle East, particularly among the Yarsan community.

Vatanpour is currently working on Essays on Gurani Literature, Edited Volume with Dr. Alireza Korangy, delving into the extensive repertoire of literature written in the Gurani language by various ethno-religious groups residing in the Zagros region.

Jacob Wolf is a founding faculty member of the University of Austin, where he is Assistant Professor of Politics in the Center for Economics, Politics, and History. He was previously Assistant Professor of Government in the Honors College and the College of Arts and Sciences at Regent University, where he also served as the Associate Director of the Lincoln Program in America's Founding Ideals. Before these positions, Jacob was the 2020-2021 John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University.  

He received his Ph.D. in political science from Boston College in 2020, double majoring in political theory and American politics. His current research employs insights from those two disciplines to understand contemporary changes in American religious beliefs and practices. In particular, he studies the social and religious ramifications of individualism—especially expressive individualism.  His overall scholarly objective is to demonstrate how ideas and presuppositions about human nature have profound consequences for both individuals and society.

His academic writing has been published in Perspectives on Political Science, Political Science Reviewer, Interpretation, and The Public Discourse. His book manuscript, tentatively-titled "Harmonizing Heaven and Earth," argues that individualism—and not secularization—is responsible for large scale changes in American religion.  He has been awarded scholarly fellowships from The Philadelphia Society, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Jack Miller Center, the Philos Project, and the Institute for Humane Studies.  He is the 2022 recipient of the Jack Miller Center's Award for Excellence in Civic Education as well as the 2018 Donald J. White Award for Teaching Excellence from Boston College.

Jonathan Yudelman is Assistant Professor of Political Theory in Intellectual Foundations at UATX. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Boston College and from 2020-2024 held postdoctoral positions at Princeton, Harvard, Baylor, and Arizona State University. His current research focuses on early modern political theory, the idea of progress, sources of political authority, and the intersection of politics and religion. His non-academic writing covers topical political, cultural, and religious issues and has appeared in numerous publications. He is currently preparing a book manuscript, Hobbes and the Birth of Ideological Politics.