Faculty Pages

Marianne M. Delaporte

Associate Professor of Religious Studies

Office location: Campus Center 5
Office hours: Monday and Wednesday
Phone number: (650) 508-4181
Email: mdelaporte@ndnu.edu


Before coming to NDNU in 2002, Marianne Delaporte was finishing her PhD work at Princeton Seminary and working at the San Francisco Archdiocese. She is very active in the West Coast branch of the American Academy of Religion, serving as chair for the Christian History section and is also an active member of the American Society of Church History. Her work on Carolingian hagiography has led to an interest in understandings of masculnity in the Carolingian court as well as a desire to study the Biblical exegesis of the time.


Education History

  • Ph.D., Medieval Church History. Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ. 2004.

    Dissertation: “The Headless Holy Man: A Study of the Lives of Denis by Hilduin of Saint-Denis.”

  • M.A., History of Religion. Graduate Theological Union, Franciscan School of Theology, Berkeley, CA. 1993. 

  • Dissertation: “Saints and Beasts: The Iconography of Animals in Breton Hagiography.”

  • B.A. – Religion and Humanities, University of Chicago, 1990

Courses Taught

  • History of Christianity, early and modern
  • Women's Spirituality
  • Developments in Gender and Sexuality in the Christian Church
  • Reel Religion
  • Voices in Christian Spirituality
  • Theologies of Liberation
  • The Christian in Society
  • World Religions
  • Ways of the Earth

Research and Interests

  • Rewriting of saints lives: influences of Hilduin's 9th c. vita of St Denis upon later torture narratives
  • Biblical Exegesis in the Carolingian Court

Recognitions

  • Fellowship - Lilly Foundation Grant: Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, 2006 - 2007
  • Faculty Development Research Grant, NDNU. Fall 2005, Spring 2007.
  • Doctoral Fellowship – Princeton Theological Seminary, 1996 – 2000.
  • Graduate Fellowship Award – Graduate Theological Union, 1991 – 1993.

Professional Affiliations

  • American Academy of Religion
  • American Association of University Professors
  • American Historical Association
  • American Society of Church History
  • Hagiography Society
  • Medieval Association of the Pacific

Teaching Experience 

  • Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, CA: Assistant Professor of Religious Studies. Fall 2003 – present.
  • Pacific Union College, Angwin, CA: Contract teacher, “Medieval Europe” Winter 2002.
  • Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ: Teaching fellow, “Introduction to Church History I and II” Fall 1999, Spring 1998, Fall 1997.
  • Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA: Teaching assistant, “Film and Religion” Spring 1992.

Professional Experience

  • Princeton Theological Seminary: research assistant – sociology, Richard Fenn, Fall 1998 – Spring 2002.
  • Princeton Theological Seminary: editorial assistant to Richard Fenn, Companion to Sociology of Religion, Blackwell Publishers, 2001.
  • Princeton Theological Seminary: research assistant – modern European history, James Deming. Fall 1998 – Spring 1999.
  • Graduate Theological Union: research assistant – American Catholic Church history, Jeffrey Burns, 1992 – 1994.

Community Activities

  • Co-Chair, History of Christianity Sessions, WECSOR (Western Commission for the Study of Religion). 2007 - present.
  • Member of the American Society of Church History’s Membership Committee, 2005 - present.
  • Associate Editor of Journal of Theology and Religion, 2006 - present.

Publications

  • Paper Presentation: The Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius as Understood or Misunderstood by Hilduin of Saint-Denis at the American Society of Church History Spring meeting. Salt Lake City, Utah. April 13 - 15, 2007.
  • Paper Presentation: Monsters Singing of Love: Torture and Cephalophory in the 9th c. vita of Saint Denis in “Writing and Re-Writing Christian History” session. WECSOR Meeting. Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA. March 24 - 26, 2007
  • “He Darkens Me with Brightness: the Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius in Hilduin’s Vita of Saint Denis” in Religion and Theology: A Journal of Contemporary Religious Discourse (13:3 and 4), 2006.
  • Several articles in Westminster Dictionary of the Christian Church. Forthcoming.
  • Commentator - “Hybridity as Orthodoxy” Session. American Society of Church History. January 8, 2006. Philadelphia.
  • Co-author, “Hell as a Residual Category” in Companion to Sociology of Religion, Blackwell Publishers, 2001.
  • Review of John Kitchen’s Saints’ Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender: Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography in Koinonia (11:1, Spring 1999).
  • Review of Richard Fenn’s The End of Time in The Princeton Seminary Bulletin (20:2, 1999).
  • Review of Gary MacEoin et al., ed. The Papacy and the People of God, in Koinonia (9:1, Spring 1998).