In addition to classroom teaching, faculty and other academic personnel at Grebel accomplish a wide range of scholarship and service in the academy, church, and community. Here is just a sampling of recent activities and achievements:
JENNIFER BALL’s book Women, Development, and Peacebuilding: Stories from Uganda, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in September 2018.
ALICIA BATTEN presented two conference papers at the November 2018 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in Denver, Colorado. The first paper offers a review of a recent book on ritual and early Christianity, while the second assesses the SBL educational website, BibleOdyssey.org.
JEREMY BERGEN presented a paper titled “The Ecumenism of Martyrdom and the Mission of the Church” at the American Academy of Religion annual meetings in Denver, Colorado, November 17, 2018.
MARLENE EPP presented the keynote address, “The Intersectional Mennonite and Writing Inclusive Histories: Cookbook as Metaphor,” at A People of Diversity: Mennonites in Canada since 1970, the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada’s 50th Anniversary Conference, University of Winnipeg, November 15, 2018.
LOWELL EWERT traveled with a group of seven MPACS students to Glenside, Pennsylvania, to attend the Peace and Justice Studies Association Conference held at Arcadia University, September 27-30, 2018. He delivered a paper entitled “Expanded View of Peace Studies in a Divisive Era.” A second paper he co-wrote with an MPACS student on the topic of the “Efficacy of Op-Eds” was presented by Kelsey Gallagher.
NATHAN FUNK led a workshop entitled “Can We Talk?: Dialogue and Social Change” for Global Peace Centre Canada and the Hamilton Community Foundation, Hamilton, Ontario, on June 8, 2018.
Laureen Harder-Gissing’s article, “'Hidden in That Little List':” Genealogical Pursuits, Outcomes, and Representations in the Lives of Two Mennonite Women” was published in Mennonite Quarterly Review, 92 (July 2018): 377-401.
PAUL HEIDEBRECHT completed a book chapter entitled “Christian Political Engagement in a New Key? Reading Ellul in Ottawa,” in Political Illusion and Reality: Engaging the Prophetic Insights of Jacques Ellul, edited by David W. Gill and David Lovekin, published by Wipf and Stock, 2018.
JANE KUEPFER successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, Narratives of Baby Boomers: Envisioning Late Life Spiritual Resources, at Martin Luther University College, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, in June 2018.
REINA NEUFELDT travelled to Haiti this summer for a mid-term reflection and evaluation workshop with Mercy Corps. She also wrote an article, “When Good Intentions Are Not Enough,” which is featured in the fall edition of the The Conrad Grebel Review.
TROY OSBORNE attended a meeting of the editorial board of the Classics of the Reformation Series at the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana, August 16-17, 2018.
CAROL PENNER presented “#ChurchToo and the Engaged Practical Theologian,” at the British and Irish Association for Practical Theology Conference held at the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK,
July 10-12, 2018.
MAISIE SUM completed fieldwork this summer for a cross-cultural study of music, health and well-being in Morocco and Indonesia, which was generously funded by the UW/SSHRC SEED Grant and Grebel’s Academic Development and Research Fund. She also presented, “Getting the Groove: Variation, Expectation and Affective Responses Across Cultures” at the Analytical Approaches to World Music Conference, in Thessaloniki, Greece, June 25-29, 2018, and “Wearables in the Field: A New Dimension to Ethnomusicology?” at the Society for Ethnomusicology Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in November 2018.
KAREN SUNABACKA travelled to Texas State University in November to work with an ensemble on her newest piece and presented at a composition seminar. The piece, commissioned by a string duo based at Texas State University is on the theme of women and connections. She also completed “We All Sing” in August that was commissioned for the Grebel Sings project.
Photo: Karen Sunabacka performs “We All Sing” at Grebel’s 2018 Commencement Service.
MARK VUORINEN’s paper, “At the intersection of ratio and intuitio: Arvo Pärt’s Como cierba sedienta” appears in the Fall 2018 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Principles of Music Composing, published by the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.
