Dr. Vander Elst received his PhD from Princeton University in 2006. Following a Mellon post-doctoral fellowship at the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, Dr. Vander Elst began teaching at USD in 2009. He specializes in Middle English literature, especially Chaucer and fourteenth-century English romance, literature, rhetoric, and propaganda of the later crusades, and literary representations of medieval politics.

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Thomas W. Barton, PhD, joined the faculty in 2007. He offers a wide sweep of undergraduate courses, including The Medieval World, The Pacific World, Europe’s Discovery and Conquest of the World, Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Spain, Renaissance Europe, and Historians’ Methods. His research concerns the social history of Europe and contacts between Europeans and non-Europeans in the medieval and early modern periods, with a current focus on the case of eastern Iberia and the western Mediterranean.

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Cynthia L. Caywood, PhD, has been a member of the faculty since 1984.  She is currently serves as co-director of the London Summer Program.  In the English department, Caywood offers undergraduate courses on restoration and eighteenth century British literature, world drama, and women's literature and graduate courses in seventeenth and eighteenth century drama.  Her research interests include Aphra Behn, Jane Austen, and August Wilson, with special interests in British and American theatre history, stage production, and feminist theory.

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Before coming to USD, Jerome Hall, PhD, was the underwater archaeologist for Puerto Rico and president of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology.  His current research projects include the excavation of a 17th-century northern European merchant shipwreck off the north coast of the Dominican Republic, as well as the documentation and publication of a 1st-century boat recovered from the Sea of Galilee.

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David Hay, PhD, came to the university as a co-founder of the MFA Program in Acting, a program he directed for seven years. He has also been the director of the Southeast San Diego Tutoring Program, director of the Undergraduate Theatre Arts Program, and is currently co-director of the London Study Abroad Program.

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Rev. Jack E. Lindquist is a minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America with an M.Div. from the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago who has taught in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, both part-time and full-time, since 1970. His research and teaching specialties are  “The World of the New Testament” (through which he has led many study tours), “The Reformation Era,” “The Holocaust and the Churches Under Hitler,” and “Lutheran and Roman Catholic Theological Dialogue.” His publications have included: “The Eucharist: An Ecumenical Spectrum” (International Eucharistic Congress: Philadelphia, 1976) and “The Emmaus Story (Luke 24:13-35) as Liturgical Catechesis” (Studies In Honor of Toivo Harjunpaa: Helsinki, 1977); six articles on "Lutheranism" in An Introductory Dictionary Of Theology and Religious Studies. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2007.

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Juliana Maxim, PhD, teaches the history and theory of art and architecture. Her work centers on 20th century art, architecture and urbanism in Eastern Europe and on the relation between representation and political regimes, as well as on the question of "other" modernisms. Her PhD dissertation, "The New, the Old, the Modern:  Architecture and its Representation in Socialist Romania, 1955-1965" (MIT, 2006) examines how the architectural culture of postwar Romania sustained the regime's attempt to transform inhabitation and the city into a new collectivist environment.

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Molly McClain, PhD, serves as director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program. Her work in seventeenth-century British history includes a biography of the duke and duchess of Beaufort as well as articles on Queen Mary II. She also publishes work on local history. A ninth-generation San Diegan, she co-edits The Journal of San Diego History.

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Areas of interest: late classical and medieval; history of the English language; textual criticism and historical linguistics.  Recent publications include A History of the English Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010) and Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts Housed in Switzerland (Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 2009), and articles in Notes & Queries, Journal of English & Germanic Philology, Mediaevistik, Studia Neophilologica, and The Chaucer Review.

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Lance E. Nelson, PhD, is professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies.  He teaches courses in world religions and religious traditions of Asia.  Nelson’s research specialization is in Hindu religious history, focusing on classical systems of Hindu theology and the relation between Hindu religious practice and environmental concern.

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Susie Paulik Babka, PhD, is excited to be a part of the community at USD that seeks to intertwine Beauty with Justice.  Beauty is that which draws us out of ourselves toward something deeper; Justice is the practical work of transforming this world into the world intended by God: a world that celebrates the dignity of every human being, our inherent interdependence, and the worth of all creation.

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Linda L. Peterson, PhD, has been a member of the faculty since 1985.  She routinely teaches classes in thehHistory of medieval philosophy and the philosophy of human nature.  Her research area of specialization is in the history of medieval philosophy with particular emphasis on the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Her research focus also includes philosophy of religion and metaphysics.

Peterson enjoys traveling and has traveled extensively including trips to Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, the Arctic Circle and Antarctica.  She particularly enjoys visiting cites of interest to the history of medieval philosophy.  She has traveled throughout Italy, visiting the birthplace of St. Thomas Aquinas and the monastery where he died. 

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Marianne Pfau, PhD, heads the music history and literature program at USD, offers international Early Music Festivals, and directs the concert series Angelus: Sacred Early Music in Founders Chapel.   Since 2006, she also teaches graduate seminars at the Musicological Institute of the University of Hamburg, Germany.

Pfau also has an active performance career as baroque oboist.  She performs and records with American Bach Soloists, Jubilate Baroque Orchestra and California Bach Society in San Francisco; Corona del Mar Baroque Festival in Los Angeles; Trinity Consort in Oregon, and Ensemble Rebel in New York. In Europe she appears with Musica Alta Ripa, L’Arco Baroque Orchestra Hannover, Corona Musica Kassel, Cythara Ensemble Hamburg, and Accademia dell’Arcadia Poznan.

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Santiago Rubio-Fernaz has been a member of the faculty since 1998. He is a lecturer in Classics and also currently serves as Director of Placement for the Department of Languages and Literatures. In the Languages Department, Professor Rubio-Fernaz offers undergraduate courses on Latin and Greek and occasionally on Spanish. His research focus is Roman and Greek poetry, with special interests in Greek epic poetry of the Hellenistic Age and Roman lyric poetry of the Classical Period.

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Maria Cecilia Ruiz, PhD, has been a member of the faculty since 1990.

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Abraham Stoll, PhD, specializes in Renaissance and early modern literature, particularly the literature of seventeenth-century England. His recent book, Milton and Monotheism, is on the poetry and theology of John Milton. He also edited the five-volume edition of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. Currently, he is working on a study of conscience in the early modern period. Stoll has taught at the University of San Diego since 2000, and was visiting professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 2006-07.

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Michael F. Wagner, PhD, has been a member of the faculty since 1980.  His administrative appointments have included chair of the Philosophy Department (1988-1998) and director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities major (1987-1993, 2001-2007).  His research interests include several topic areas in Ancient and Hellenistic philosophy, in the classical Neoplatonic tradition, in the philosophy of time and science, and in Platonistic conceptions of eros and their cultural influences.

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