Biography
Robert Paul Seesengood is Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Teaching Professor of Bible and Cultures at Drew Theological School, Drew University, in Madison, New Jersey. His areas of academic specialty include the history and method of Biblical interpretation, Bible in/and popular culture, Reception Criticism, and Critical Theory. He is general editor of the monograph series The Bible and its Reception (SBL Press) and Biblical Intersections (Gorgias Press), and co-editor (with Rhiannon Graybill) of the online, open access journal The Bible & Critical Theory. He is the author of numerous articles, essays, reviews and monographs, most recently: Judith (with Jennifer L. Koosed; WBC; Liturgical Press 2022), The Bible and Cultural Studies: Critical Readings (T & T Clark 2023), and American Standard: the Bible in U.S. Popular Culture (Wiley-Blackwell 2024).
Candidate Statement
It is clear these are challenging times for professional scholarship in Religious Studies. Worldwide shifts in geopolitical influence, economics and technologies create connections but also fractures. What seemed once to be global growth in social justice, inclusion and equity has proven, once again, all too fragile. Religious allegiance and historic differences are aligned with political ideologies in ways that offer potential, but also real risk. Public trust in organized religion and higher educational institutions is at a critical low. Within the United States, the past two years have seen relentless blows of challenging enrollments, failing resources, and ominous intrusions into intellectual freedom. And then there is the imposing challenge of artificial intelligence with all the ethical, environmental, economic and epistemological changes that will roil in its wake.
To approach this current moment with the ideas, strategies and structures that have been dominant for the past ten years is inadequate. Indeed, existentially so. Using old logics, the future belongs to STEM, religion is at best commentary (more often: irrelevant). The Humanities are less and less viable. Those conclusions feel inevitable. And yet, they aren’t. As geopolitical order declines, distribution of resources becomes more uneven, and artificial intelligence ascends, the need for critical religious studies could not be more important. Solutions to global problems will not come from wealth or technology; the hard-learned lessons of Modernity assure us of that. We need careful reflection, allegiance to inquiry, deep concern for ethics, restraint and respect toward ecology, understanding of human systems, empathy for the Other, informed discernment, and an awareness (without reverence) of history. What the coming decade(s) need most are the skills and insights of professional, critical study of Religion.
I have been professionally engaged in religious studies in higher education for nearly three decades. In that time, I have lived the context of nearly every level of our work: contingent faculty, tenure track, tenured to full professor, and on to administration. I have worked at a variety of institutional types: regional public, independent residential arts college, and specialized graduate and professional schools. I have been involved with AAR throughout that time, active in regional and national levels, leading steering committees, presenting work, and engaging in public discourse. I match that with an equal period of service in the Society of Biblical Literature. I have served on the national board of Theta Alpha Kappa. In my work, I have been involved with numerous strategic planning and program-level initiatives, learning what works and how to achieve it. As academic dean at Drew Theological School and with an active scholarly and editorial program, I am aware of leading trends in scholarship and the breadth of the discipline. I want to bring these skills and experiences and the networks that have grown along with them into the service of the AAR board, working together with AAR, institutions and individual scholars to find new strategies that ensure Religious Studies not only thrives in the coming decades, but clearly and decisively meets the challenges of the future.