Department of Religion Welcomes New Assistant Professor

Her primary research interests are continental philosophy and Christian theology. She also focuses on post-colonial Christianities; literary and critical theory; and race, gender and sexuality studies.

Rubenstein comes to Wesleyan from the Department of Religion at Columbia University in New York. There, she taught Contemporary Civilization and co-taught the courses, “Religions in the Modern World” and “Religion and Its Critics.” She was awarded the Core Curriculum Teaching Award in 2006.

Rubenstein received a bachelor of arts in religion and English from Williams College; a master’s degree in philosophical theology from Emmanuel College, Cambridge University; a master’s degree in philosophy of religion and certificate in comparative literature and society from Columbia University; and a Ph.D in philosophy of religion from Columbia. Her dissertation was titled “Wondrous Strange: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe.”

Having studied at a liberal arts college, Rubenstein says she is deeply committed to the kind of learning that takes place at an institution where teaching and scholarship are equally valued.

“At Wesleyan in particular, one gets the feeling that students and faculty consistently encourage one another to maintain a certain intellectual openness, to be ready to be surprised, even amazed, by new possibilities for thought and collaboration,” she says. “I am delighted to be coming to Wesleyan; honestly, I couldn’t have dreamed up a better job.”

Rubenstein is the author of a dozen articles and book reviews, some on the topic of philosophers Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Derrida and negative theology and global Anglicanism. In recent years, her article “The Unbearable Withness of Being: On the Essentialist Blind-Spot of Anti-Ontotheology,” appeared in Theology and the Political, published by Duke University Press, and “An Anglican Crisis of Comparison: Intersections of Race, Gender, and Religious Authority with Particular Reference to the Church of Nigeria,” was published in the Journal of American Academy of Religion.

In the fall, Rubenstein will be teaching two courses, Modern Christian Thought and the Problem of Evil. In the spring, she will teach Introduction to Philosophy of Religion and a course on the death of God. Meanwhile, she is busy settling into her new office in the Department of Religion.