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Faculty
Philip M. Dunston, Ph.D.
Director of AIDP and Interim Chair
Office Location: McPheeters-Dennis Hall, Room 37
Office Phone: (404) 880-6043
E-mail: pdunston@cau.edu
Dr. Philip M. Dunston is the Interim Chair of the Department.
He has served on the faculty since 1992. His course curriculum
includes: REL. 362: Psychology of Religion, REL. 101: Bible History,
GED 101: Freshman Seminar and he is a DuBois Fellow for the class
of 2011. Dr. Dunston is the Director of the Accelerated Interdisciplinary
Degree Program (AIDP), the honors program in Religion. He has
served as a member of the Board of Trustees and as a Faculty
Assembly officer. His publications include: Keep It Real--Working
with Today's Black Youth, Abingdon Press 2005. Chapter 2,
"A Matter of Discovery." Online Journal, Network,
Spirituality and Higher Education, Fall 2005. He has written
the foreword for two publications: Fragments of John's Gospel,
L.H. Whelchel and Dismantling the Twin Towers of Race and Racism,
Alfred Walker Jr. Dr. Philip Dunston is currently developing
a new course in Black Theology and writing for an online journal,
Testamentum.
David E. Cann, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Religion
Office Location: McPheeters-Dennis Hall, Room 32
Office Phone: (404) 880-8658
E-mail Address: dcann@cau.edu
Dr. Cann is teaching in his fourth year at CAU. He has taught
the following courses in both the Undergraduate Humanities Program
and the Department of Religion: Culture and Religion; Biblical
Heritage; Introduction to Religious Studies; Interdisciplinary
Humanities. Humanities: the Ancient Period, and Humanities: The
Modern Period. The CAU Humanities Program currently uses the
textbook he has co-edited. He uses his experience as a pastor
and ordained minister in the United Methodist Church to foster
greater connections between the academy and religious institutions.
His main areas of interest include the sociology of the Black
Church in America, religion and social change, multiculturalism,
and religion and race in America.
Recent Publications:
Fracturing the Canon: An Interdisciplinary Humanities
Reader, Coeditor. Thomson Learning Custom Publishing, 2001.
Illya Davis, M.T.S
Lecturer in Philosophy and Religion
Office Location: McPheeters-Dennis Hall, Room 30
Office Phone: Phone (404) 880-8234
Illya Davis received his B.
A. degree in philosophy from Morehouse College, the M.T.S degree
from Harvard University, and he is currently completing his Ph.
D. degree in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Chicago.
Generally he works mainly on topics in philosophy of religion,
metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language (including
interpretation theory), as well as the philosophy of Immanual
Kant. He is interested in the complex and systematic relationship
between philosophical inquiry and religious sensibilities. Course
he has taught include Philosophical Ethics, Religious Ethics,
Introduction to Philosophy, and African-American Religious Experience.
Mr. Davis will offer courses in Spring 2006 in African-American
Philosophy and Philosophy of Race.
Beletia Marvray Diamond, D. Min.
Lecturer in Religion
Office Location: McPheeters-Dennis Hall
Dr. Beletia Marvray Diamond teaches courses in Religion, specifically
Introduction to Religious Studies, Comparative Religion, Women
and the Bible, and The Biblical Heritage. Some of her publications
include: A Survey of the History of the Black Church from
the 1600s - Present: A Curriculum Course for Students at Spelman
College, Dissertation, 1997; "The Day Samaritan Sally
Met Jesus" Those Preaching Women, Vol. III, 1996;
"The Surrendered Life: Modeled by Mother Teresa," Human
Coexistence and Sustainable Development World Congress, Vol.
II, Montreal, Canada, 2000; "The Predicament of God's Permissive
Will and the Privilege of God's Perfect Will" AME Review,
2002; "Accountable Stewards," "Called to Be Peculiar
People," Meditations and Reflections for the 44th Quadrennial
Session of the AME General Conference, 1992; "A Venture
by Faith," Missionary Magazine of AME Church, 1982;
Sincere Prayer, Workbook/Study Guide, Big Bethel AME Church,
Atlanta, Ga.; The History of the Black Church, Workbook/Study
Guide, Spelman College.
Ralph Ellis, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Office Location: McPheeters-Dennis Hall, Room 34
Office Phone: (404) 880-8237
E-mail Address: rellis@cau.edu
Dr. Ellis received his Ph.D. degree in Philosophy at Duquesne
University and a Postdoctoral M.S. in Public Affairs at Georgia
State University. He is interested in political philosophy, and
in integrating the social sciences with the philosophy of mind.
His nine published books include: An Ontology of Consciousness
(1986), Theories of Criminal Justice (1989), Coherence and Verification
in Ethics (1992), Questioning Consciousness (1995), Eros in a
Narcissistic Culture (1996), Just Results: Ethical Foundations
for Policy Analysis (1998), The Caldron of Consciousness: Affect,
Motivation, and Self-Organization (2000), and a critical
thinking textbook, The Craft of Thinking. Dr. Ellis is
also editor of an academic journal, Consciousness and Emotion
(http://www.benjamins.nl/jbp).
Norman Fischer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Office Location: McPheeters-Dennis Hall, Room 33
Office Phone: (404) 880-6137
E-mail: nfischer@cau.edu
Dr. Fischer has taught Critical Thinking, Introduction to Philosophy,
Ethics and Human Values, Ancient and Modern Philosophy, and a
Special Topics course on Ideas of Slavery and Freedom. His main
areas of interest are as follows: the history of political philosophy
and ethics, the philosophy of art (particularly literature),
and the nature of philosophical inquiry; he also has interest
in questions that regard the philosophy of sport. He received
his Ph.D. degree from Emory University. He has recently co-authored
a book with Ralph Ellis and James Sauer titled Foundations
of Civic Engagement: Rethinking Social and Political Philosophy.
He is the author of articles in ancient and modern philosophy,
as well as in the philosophy of sport and philosophy of literature.
Reverand Herbert Marbury, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Religion
and University Chaplain
Office Location: Kresge Hall, Room 200
Office Phone: (404) 880-6119
E-mail: hmarbury@cau.edu
Reverend Marbury serves as the University Chaplain at Clark Atlanta
University and also teaches a Biblical Heritage course in the
Department of Religion and Philosophy. He earned the Ph.D. degree
at The Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in the Department
of Religion, where his major was Hebrew Bible and his minor was
Ethics. Reverend Marbury's academic interests are:
Old Testament: History of Ancient Israel; Social History
of Persian Judah; the 'Am ha'arets Problem; Archaeology and Historical
Reconstruction; Rhetoric of the Second Temple Community; Politics
and Economics of Persian Judah; Hermeneutics and Methods of Interpretation.
Ethics: Ethics of Ancient Israel; Old Testament Ethics;
Classical (Aristotelian) Ethics; Critical Theory; Religion and
Popular Culture.
African-American Religion: Rhetoric of the Old Testament
in African-American Ante-bellum Sermons; Cultural Criticism,
African-American Figural Interpretations in Old Testament Stories.
Thomas M. Scott, Th. D.
Assistant Professor of Religion
Office Location: McPheeters-Dennis Hall, Room 32
Office Phone: (404) 880-8658
E-mail: tscott@cau.edu
Dr. Scott has been with the
department since 1995. He teaches The Biblical Heritage, Egyptian
Hieroglyphics, Contemporary Religious Thought and Poetry as Theology.
His main areas of interest are: Ancient Africa and the Development
of the Biblical Traditions within the context of the New Testament
and Christian Origins, Contemporary Metaphysical Thought, particularly
as reflected in the Seth material so-called, and Poetry as Theology.
Dr. Scott is one of the few scholars in the country with proficiency
and expertise in hieroglyphics outside of Egyptology as a discrete
discipline. He received his Th. D. degree in New Testament and
Christian Origins from Harvard University Divinity School, having
successfully defended (with honors) a doctoral thesis titled
"Egyptian Elements in Hermetic Literature." Currently
he is working to complete an article titled: "Some of the
Multidimensional Aspects of the Ancient Egyptian Language".
He is also seeking to have his doctoral thesis published. In
2004 he accepted an invitation to become a lifetime (that is,
distinguished) member of the International Society of Poets.
A cadre of his poems can be accessed via the International Library
of Poetry at: www.poetry.com.
Eventually, he hopes to publish an anthology of poems under title-rubric:
I Walk in Places My Soul Already Knows©. |
