Dr Peter Admirand
Research Associate in Intercultural Theology and Interreligious Studies
Dr. Peter Admirand is currently an Adjunct Lecturer in Intercultural Theology and Interreligious Studies and in International Peace Studies. He is also a Lecturer in the Abrahamic Faiths at St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra and participates in the International Council for Christians and Jews in Ireland.
His current research project, Humbling Religion: A Primer for Theists, examines the role and impact of the following five areas on religions and religious belief and practice: (1) religious pluralism, (2) postmodernity, (3) interreligious dialogue, (4) testimonies of mass atrocities, and (5) history and memory (including alternative and subaltern accounts). Essays touching upon some of these interests have been published in The Heythrop Journal, New Blackfriars, the ET Bulletin, One in Christ and as chapters in a number of edited volumes. The material has also been presented at a range of international conferences.
If forced to choose, his academic interests and research would highlight: religion and literature; interreligious dialogue; testimonies of mass atrocity; Christianity and the world religions; religious pluralism and postmodernity; trauma and witness studies; post-Holocaust Jewish thought; global Catholicism; liberation theology; forgiveness, justice and the unforgivable; memory and ethics; the Bible as literature; theodicy; war and peace; Catholic social teaching; Christology amidst the world religions, especially in the context of Jewish-Christian dialogue; the representation of God and theological themes in literature; and atheism and secular humanism.
Dr. Admirand began teaching at the ISE in 2008. Modules taught at the ISE include: “Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations,” “Ethics in International Affairs,” “Issues in Buddhist-Christian Dialogue”, and “Authority, Tradition, and Experience”. He also organises and gives lectures in the course “Ethical Globalisation: The Religions in Global Civil Society”.
During the 2008-2009 academic year, he served as the acting Programme Co-Ordinator for the M.Phil. in Ecumenics and taught the year-long course “Christianity and the World Religions” to undergraduates at Trinity College Dublin. In 2008, he earned his Ph.D. from the school of Religions and Theology at Trinity. His dissertation, Amidst Atrocity and the Rubble of Theodicy: Searching for a Viable Theodicy, assesses the theological and pastoral viability of key theodic texts within post-Holocaust Jewish thought, liberation theology, and Christian philosophical theodicy through textual analysis of testimonies from the Holocaust, communist gulags, Rwandan genocide, and other mass atrocities.
Before Trinity, he earned a M.A. in Theology (Ethics) from Boston College; a M.A. in British and American Literature from Georgetown University; and a B.A. in English (with a Religious Studies minor and University Scholar distinction) from The Catholic University of America. For three years he was an adjunct lecturer at various colleges including St. John’s University, Queens College, and York College. Each semester he taught five courses such as “The Bible as Literature,” “World Literature,” and “The Human Condition in Literature and Film.” Prior to this, he taught four courses of the Bible and one of Ethics at St. John’s College High School and served as a parish coordinator and a Life-Choice teacher for Catholic Charities in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in California. In 2007, he was cited as a Who’s Who Among American Teachers.
Areas of expertise
theodicy, post-Holocaust Jewish thought, testimonial literature, Catholic social teaching, liberation theology, Jewish-Christian dialogue; Christology among the world religions, literature and theology, and the Bible as literature
Modules taught
Issues in Buddhist-Christian Dialogue; Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations; Authority, Tradition, Experience: Exploring the Ecology of Oikoumene
Education
Ph.D., Theology, Trinity College Dublin
M.A., Theology (Ethics), Boston College
M.A., British and American Literature, Georgetown University
B.A., English, The Catholic University of America
Contact details
Email: admiranp@tcd.ie
General Tel: +353 (0) 1 260 1144, ext. 104
Fax: +353 (0) 1 260 1158
Select publications
Article, “Amidst Fractured Faith and the Fragility of Reason,” New Blackfriars, forthcoming, 2010.
Article, “Embodying an ‘Age of Doubt, Solitude, and Revolt’: Christianity Beyond ‘Excarnation’ in A Secular Age”, Heythrop Journal, forthcoming 2010. Available at: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123222188/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0.
Book Chapter, “All lost! To prayers, to prayers! All lost”: Why Postmodernity, Religious Pluralism, and Interreligious Dialogue Need to be Embraced”. [Book title to be announced – published proceedings of the 12th Cultural Studies Symposium] Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar’s Press, forthcoming 2010.
Article, “Interfaith Dialogue as Presence, Gift and Obligation” in Teaching Religious
Education, Issue 4, September, 2009: 6-9. Also available at: http://www.slss.ie/resources/c/1233/TeachingRE%20Issue%204.pdf.
Book Chapter, “Jesus and Yeshua: Jewish Interpretations of the Gospels and
Its Impact on Jewish-Christian Dialogue” in A Land Like Your Own: Traditions of Israel and Their Reception (Wipf and Stock, forthcoming, 2010).
Book Chapter, “How Not to Raise Children: From Adam to David,A Contemporary Theological Perspective,” in Graduate Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Biblical World, Scranton: University of Scranton Press, forthcoming 2010.
Book Chapter, “Destructive, Concrete Evil as Absence: A Reevaluation of Privatio Boni in the Context of Mass Atrocity,” in Uneasy Humanity: Perpetual Wrestling with Evils, eds. Colette Balmain and NanetteNorris (Oxford: Inter-disciplinary Press, 2009), 41-51. Available at: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Evil-10-Final.pdf.
Book Chapter, “Theological Memory in the Face of Tragedy and Mass Atrocity,” in Facing Tragedies, eds. Christopher Hamilton, Otto Neumaier, Gottfried Schweiger, and Clemens Sedmak (Wien–Berlin–Münster: Lit-Verlag, 2009), 129-138.
Article, “Healing the Distorted Face: Doctrinal Reinterpretation(s) and the Christian Response to the Other,” One in Christ, 42 (2008): 302-317.
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