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Visiting Scholars
Jay Atkinson
B.A. Oregon State University (religious studies, 1975)
A.M University of Chicago (divinity, 1977)
D.Min. Meadville Lombard Theological School (1979)
The Rev. Dr. Jay Atkinson retired in June 2011 from thirty-two years of service in Unitarian Universalist parish ministry. During those years he served also on the adjunct faculties of Morningside College (1985), Starr King School (1994, 1999, 2006), and Meadville Lombard (2003), and was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Process Studies in Claremont in 1996.
Dr. Atkinson has published “Religious Tolerance and Social Concord in the Unitarian and Universalist Traditions” [Ideas of Concord and Discord in Selected World Religions, vol. 2 in Research in Human Social Conflict, ed. Joseph B. Gittler (Greenwich, Conn: JAI Press, 2000), 385-426] and “Engaged Dissent Among the Polish Brethren” [The Role of the Dissenter in Western Christianity: From Jesus Through the 16th Century, ed. Alicia McNary Forsey (Berkeley: Starr King, 2004), 85-96].
Presentations at scholarly conferences include “Religious Pluralism as a Response to Human Finitude: Christoff Ostorodt and the Polish Brethren” [Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, 20-23 October 2005] and “The Church as a Self-Critical Learning Community: Some Sixteenth-Century Precursors of Creative Interchange in the Ecclesiology of the Polish Brethren,” Ecclesiology Session, Sixth International Whitehead Conference, Universität Salzburg, Austria, 3-6 July 2006].
Dr. Atkinson’s abiding interests are in UU History, economic justice, and process theology. His current scholarship focuses primarily on the epistemic ecclesiology of the Polish Brethren.
Rita Nakashima Brock
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B.A. Chapman College
Ph.D. Claremont Graduate School
Dr. Brock is the founding co-director of Faith Voices for the Common Good (www.faithvoices.org), an organization dedicated to creating a nationwide community of conscience. She was a Fellow at the Harvard Divinity School Center for Values in Public Life, directed the Fellowship Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and taught religion and women's studies at a number of colleges and universities.
Dr. Brock is the author of "Journeys By Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power" and co-author, with Susan Thistlethwaite, of "Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States."
She and Starr King President Rebecca Parker published "Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us" in 2002 and are currently at work on "Saving Paradise," an investigation of early Christian ideas of paradise, holy war and violence.
See Dr. Brock's full bio on her faculty page.
Charles Garfield
Ph.D. Clinical Psychology, University of California at Berkeley
Dr. Charles Garfield has been recognized internationally as the founder of Shanti, a widely acclaimed volunteer organization, and the Shanti National Training Institute (SNTI). For over thirty-five years, he has pioneered the development of service oriented volunteer organizations and the training of volunteers in a wide variety of applications. For his work with Shanti and for originating the Shanti model of peer support, Garfield was named National Activist of the Year—one of America’s highest awards to individuals making voluntary contributions in public service. He has also received recognition by cities and organizations large and small including a Mayor’s Day in his honor in San Francisco and many others.
Dr. Garfield serves as Clinical Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California School of Medicine at San Francisco (UCSF). A Fellow of the American Psychological Association, he is currently a Visiting Scholar at Starr King School of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.
Glenna Matthews
B.A. San Jose State University
M.A. Stanford University
Ph.D. Stanford University
Dr. Matthews taught American history at Oklahoma State University for 6 years. Since returning to California, where she was born, has been a visiting associate professor of history at UC Berkeley, Stanford University, UCLA, UC Irvine, and UC Davis. She taught at Starr King as Adjunct Faculty.
Dr. Matthews is the author of five books about U.S. women's history, as well as nearly 20 articles, and has received fellowships from ACLS and the National Endowment for the Humanities for her work.
Dr. Matthews's new book is The Golden State in the Civil War: Thomas Starr King, the Republican Party, and the Birth of Modern California (Cambridge University Press, 2012). The author first became acquainted with Thomas Starr King when she curated an exhibition on the history of San Francisco for that city's public library.
Letizia Tomassone
M.Div. (equivalent) Protestant University of Rome, Italy
M.A. (equivalent) Protestant University of Montpellier, France
Dr. Tomassone is well known in the women movement in Italy for her search about a feminist spirituality and pre-pathriarcal Goddess religions. She is a pastor in her church and autor of a number of articles about the political “thought of the difference”, developed by the Feminist community of Diotima.
She has been the first women to manage the direction of the Ecumenical International Center of Agape, that is a place where protestants in Italy reflect on changes in society that affect theology and spirituality. She is now vice-president of the Federation of Protestants Churches in Italy, charged of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.
Dr. Tomassone from 2009 is the appointed teacher on “Feminist and Gender Studies” at the Protestant University of Rome, Italy (Facoltà Valdese di Teologia). She is also among the founders of the Women’s Theological Association in Italy (www.teologhe.org).
At the SKSM she is working on climate and Earth changes that impose us changes in the way to live our faith and our practice in this interrelated and wonderful world, in peril for human development. In this search she is looking for a relation within the Earth rooted in difference and gender vision of the world.
Amina Wadud
Contact by email
B.S. University of Pennsylvania
M.A. University of Michigan
Ph.D. University of Michigan
Dr. Wadud, who specializes in Islam, gender and Qur'anic studies, taught at the Religious Studies Program at Virginia Commonwealth University and the International Islamic University in Malaysia. Her background also includes advanced Arabic studies at American University in Cairo.
She's the author of “Inside the Gender Jihad: Reform in Islam”; “Introduction to Islam: A Reader”; and “Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective.”
Her current research focuses on gender as a category of thought in Islamic intellectual history and development, with a particular focus on Islamic ethics and gender.
Research Faculty
Aurelia Henry Reinhardt Emerita Professor of Religion and Culture
Clare Benedicks Fischer
Contact by email
B.A. Hunter College
M.A. Syracuse University
Ph.D. Graduate Theological Union
Dr. Fischer served as Starr King School's Aurelia Henry Reinhardt Professor of Religion and Culture from 1981 to 2005, focusing her teaching and research on the question of religion and moral community.
She has written and published on feminism and work, and created a major bibliography about women in religion entitled, "Of Spirituality: A Feminist Perspective." Her latest project is a book about 20th century mystic Simone Weil and her social philosophy of "otherness." Fischer also works on questions of civil society in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia.
In 2005, the Graduate Theological Union honored her with the Sarlo Award for Excellence in Teaching, noting her exemplary commitment to interdisciplinary and interreligious teaching methods.
Core Faculty
Dean of the Faculty
Visiting Professors
Adjunct Faculty
Student Teachers
Intern Supervisors
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