We are pleased that our alumnus Samuel Ernest has been accepted to a PhD programme at Yale.
Sam grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire and Grand Rapids, Michigan and studied English Literature at Seattle Pacific University. He graduated with a Masters of Art in Religion and Literature from Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music, as well as a Certificate in Anglican Studies from Berkeley Divinity School.
His time with SCIO helped him developing his academic interests:
In my first term with SCIO, Michaelmas 2013, I discovered gay literature, which profoundly challenged my understanding of what sort of shapes life and love can take. When I returned for Michaelmas 2014, I took a Special Topics tutorial designed with tutor Jonathan Thorpe called “Faith and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Fiction,” which laid the groundwork for both my SCIO thesis and my honors thesis at SPU.
His work at SCIO was a foundation for his PhD topic:
My work will map and plumb the boundaries between religion and literature, religious studies and theology, and queer theory and systematic theology. I hope to spend considerable time with poetry and theology by marginal gay and queer figures from the mid-twentieth century through the present day to better understand how gay writers reimagine the Christian forms of erotic and divine desire they’ve inherited and, from there, to offer my own constructive thoughts on gay literature might inform doctrine.
In the future, he hopes to continue in academia and work as a professor.