Brenna Moore
Assistant Professor
Duane Library 144
(718) 817-4762
brmoore@fordham.edu
Education
Th.D. - Harvard Divinity School
M.Div. - Harvard Divinity School
B.A. - University of Colorado
Research Interests
Modern Catholic thought (with special interests in France); la nouvelle théologie; French Catholic literary revival; intellectual-cultural history in Europe; gender and religion.
Brenna Moore is the author of Sacred Dread: Raïssa Maritain, the Allure of Suffering, and the French Catholic Revival, 1905-1945 (University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). In Sacred Dread, the life and writings of Raïssa Maritain (1883-1960) are both the central topic and the environment for inquiry into the puzzling fascination with suffering that energized twentieth-century French Catholicism. In Sacred Dread and other projects, Professor Moore relies on close analysis of theological materials and situates them within European cultural and political history to illuminate broader topics of interest in the humanities. Conversations of particular interest include subject formation and theological anthropology, gender, religious difference, religious experience, and the revitalized interest in mysticism and spirituality among leftist intellectuals (both religious and secular) in twentieth-century Europe. Professor Moore has participated in the National Endowment of the Humanities Summer Seminar on Religion, the Kanderstag Seminar on Religion in Europe for NYU’s Remarque Institute, and has presented widely at national and international conferences. For more information on Sacred Dread, click
here.
Background
Professor Moore came to Fordham in 2008 from Harvard Divinity School, where she completed her doctorate in the History of Christianity with a focus on modern European Christian thought and practice. Currently, Professor Moore is pursuing two new projects. The first explores the debates surrounding the ressourcement impulse that animated the theological circuits in early twentieth-century France and laid the ground work for the Second Vatican Council. She is examining the tumultuous relationship between two Jesuit historians of spirituality, Michel de Certeau and Henri de Lubac, to explore their divergent views on how modern scholars should best approach the study of Christian premodernity. In this effort to fill out a more complex picture of Catholicism’s “turn to the past,” she is also exploring the contributions of under-explored lay women medievalists, Marie-Therese d’Avlerny and Marie-Madeleine Davy, who both shared an interest in the place of religious difference in Christian history (Christian encounters with Islam and Buddhism in particular). In a second project, Professor Moore explores the topic of friendship as a richer way to understand religious subjectivity. At Fordham, she regularly teaches undergraduate courses on controversies in the modern Catholic Church, Christian thought and practice, and a new comparative religion course called “Religion as Human Experience.” At the graduate level, Professor Moore offers courses in late-modern Christian history and special seminars such as the new course “Medieval Modernisms” offered Spring 2013.
Publications
Sacred Dread: Raïssa Maritain, the Allure of Suffering, and the French Catholic Revival (1905-1945) (University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming 2012).
“Building a New Tribe in the Gathering Storm: Jews and Judaism in the French Catholic Revival 1905-1939.”
The Catholic Historical Review, forthcoming Fall 2012.
“How to Awaken the Dead: Michel de Certeau, Henri de Lubac, and the Instabilities between the Past and the Present,” forthcoming in special edition of
Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality dedicated to the legacy of Michel de Certeau.
“To Entwine the Living and the Dead: Gender, Religious Difference, and the Ressourcement Debates in French Catholicism,” Chapter in forthcoming edited volume,
Modern French Catholic Intellectuals.
“Suffering Femininity, Devotion, and French Catholic History: Raïssa Maritain (1883-1960) and Léon Bloy (1846-1917).”
Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, Volume 9, Number 1, Spring 2009, pp. 46-68.
Select Presentations:
“Vatican II and the Jews: French Connections,” co-presenter and co-author with Richard Crane, “Rethinking Vatican II” Conference, Walsh University, May 4, 2012.
“How to Awaken the Dead: Michel de Certeau, Henri de Lubac, and the Instabilities between the Past and the Present,” American Academy of Religion, November 2011.
“To Entwine the Living and the Dead: Women, Gender, and the Ressourcement Debates in French Catholicism.” Oxford University and Magdalene College, March 2011.
“Amidst the Ruins of Dissolving Worlds: René Chateaubriand’s Ambivalent Savage and Its Scholarly Legacy,” paper presented for panel, “Rethinking the Savage in French Catholicism.” American Society of Church History, Boston, January, 2010.
Commentator, “French Catholics and the Crises of the Twentieth Century,” Catholic Historical Association Panel, Boston, January 2010.
“To Walk Backwards into the Future: Religious Retrievals in a Time of Crisis,” Panel Organizer, University of Toronto, and paper presenter, “Memory and Suffering in the Irredeemable Present: Raïssa Maritain in Exile (1940-1944).”
“Modernity and Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Europe: A Typological Approach,” Religious Reflection Group, American Academy of Religion, Forthcoming, November 2009.
Respondent for “Extreme Spirituality,” Catholic Studies Group, American Academy of Religion, November 2009.
“Raïssa Maritain: Women in the French Catholic Revival,” presenter and co-organizer for panel entitled, “Suffering Saints, Consecrated Virgins, and Valiant Women: Lay Catholic Women and Theology.” American Academy of Religion, Catholic Studies Panel, November 2007.
“Images of Grief in the Mid-Twentieth Century French Catholic Revival,” American Academy of Religion, Catholic Studies Panel, November 2006.
Courses
SPRING 2013
THEO 3390-R01: Church in Controversy, TF 10:00-11:15
THEO 3390-R02: Church in Controversy, TF 11:30-12:45
THEO 6444-R01: Medieval Midernisms, T 4:00-6:30
FALL 2013
HPRH 3001-R02: Religion in the Modern World, TF 2:30-3:45
THEO 3853-R01: Spirituality and Politics, TF 10:00-11:15
