Assistant Professor, Program Director, Catholic Studies
Dr. Elizabeth M. Pyne is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies who specializes in contemporary Christian theologies. She is also the Director of the William C. Sennett Institute for Mercy and Catholic Studies at Mercyhurst.
Her research and teaching focus on how traditions of faith intersect with questions of social and ecological justice. She has published several articles and book chapters on the work of Edward Schillebeeckx, a twentieth-century Catholic theologian, as well as on theological approaches to issues ranging from feminism to climate change. She is currently finishing the manuscript for her first book, Suspended Nature: Theology, Ecology, and Creaturely Politics.
- Ph.D. - Fordham University, Theology
- M.T.S. - University of Notre Dame, Theology
- B.A. - University of Virginia, Religious Studies
- Exploring Catholicism
- Catholicism and Social Justice
- Capstone Ethics
- Jesus the Christ
- Liberation, Religion, and Society
- Religion and Environment
- Systematic theology
- Ecotheology/environmental humanities
- Political theology
- Critical theory
- Feminism and gender studies
- American Academy of Religion
- Catholic Theological Society of America
- Suspended Nature: Theology, Ecology, and Creaturely Politics, Studies in Edward Schillebeeckx, London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark (under contract).
- “On Providence, Suffering, and Creation Faith: Perspectives from ‘Anthropocene’ Aporias.” In Making Room for the Story to Continue?, ed. Ernst M. Conradie and Upolu Luma Vaai. An Earthed Faith: Telling the Story amid the ‘Anthropocene,” vol. 4. Eugene, OR/Capetown: Wipf and Stock/AOSIS (under contract; anticipated 2024).
- “Unnatural Futures and Hope for Our Common Home.” Political Theology Network, Catholic Re-Visions blog. October 2023.
- Introduction to “Part IV: Theology of Culture.” In T & T Clark Reader in Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Stephan van Erp and Daniel Minch. London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2023.
- “Dangerous Forecasts for a Climate of Justice: Far-Right Environmentalisms and a Planet on Fire.” In Doing Climate Justice: Theological Perspectives, ed. Jan Niklas Collet et al. Paderborn: Brill Schöningh, 2022.
- “Queer Ecologies and Apocalyptic Thinking.” In The Environmental Apocalypse: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Jakub Kowalewski, Routledge Environmental Humanities. London: Routledge, 2022.
- “Pandemic Perspectives on Nature, Gender, and Human Ecology,” College Theology Society, Annual Convention, June 3-6, 2021.
- “Creation Faith and the Politics of Nature: Reading Schillebeeckx in an Ecological Age.” In T & T Clark Handbook of Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Stephan van Erp and Daniel Minch. London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2019.
- “Feminist Theology, #MeToo, and Critical Unrest: Against Identitarian Temptations with Adorno’s Philosophy of Nonidentity,” Louvain Studies 42 no. 3, 2019, p. 241-263.
- “Nature, Creature, Kin: Laudato Si’ and Political Theology in the Capitalocene” (paper); “Discernment and Doing Justice” (invited panelist), Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology, KU Leuven, October 23-26, 2019.
- “‘To Become Again What We Never Were’: Irenaeus and Schillebeeckx on the Transformations of Finitude,” Catholic Theological Society of America, Annual Convention, June 6-9, 2019.
- “The Diversity of Creaturely Life,” America magazine. Online: June 18, 2015; print excerpt: vol. 215 no. 2, in “Praised Be Creation.”
- “To Desire God and Nature: Michel de Certeau’s Promise for a Theo-Ecological Subjectivity,” College Theology Society, Annual Convention, May 28-30, 2015.
- “Bearing the Weight of Salvation: A Liberative Christology in the Face of Climate Change,” Climate Change and the Common Good, University of Notre Dame, April 8-10, 2013. (Invited)
As Director of the William C. Sennett Institute for Mercy and Catholic Studies, Dr. Pyne provides the Mercyhurst and Erie Community with a Catholic Studies Lecture Series held each fall. Here Dr. Pyne is pictured with the 2022 speaker, Dr. Andrew Prevot. Dr. Pyne also oversees the Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, archive and the bi-annual Chittister Conversations. In 2022, Sister Joan was “In Conversation” with Dr. Mary McAleese, former President of Ireland.
