Terri Jett
Associate Professor, Political Science
Dr. Terri Jett is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Special Assistant to the Provost for Diversity and Inclusivity. Dr. Jett is also an affiliate faculty member of the Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies Program. She teaches courses on U.S. politics with a focus on the experiences of AfricanAmericans and other ethnic minorities such as Black Political Thought and The Politics of Alice Walker. Her research focus is on the post-Civil Rights Movement experiences of African Americans in rural communities in the southern U.S. and she is currently writing on the recent settlements of Black, Native American, Women and Latino farmers against the United States Department of Agriculture for discrimination. Dr. Jett has a B.A. in Ethnic Studies and a Masters in Public Administration from California State University, Hayward (now East Bay) and a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Public Administration from Auburn University. She is President of the Board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana and serves on the Indiana Debate Commission.
PUBLISHED ON Jan 26 2018
At the heart of Christian faith is the resurrection—the idea that "Jesus is risen." But what does that mean? Did Jesus literally walk out of the tomb? Did he transform into a new body? Or is the resurrection symbolic or metaphorical?
Those are some of the questions Center for Faith and Vocation Scholar in Residence and Instructor of Religion Brent Hege examines in his new book, Myth, History, and the Resurrection in German Protestant Theology.
Hege writes that beginning in the 18th century and for about 300 years, theologians—starting in Germany, then spreading across Europe and the United States—have debated the true meaning of the resurrection.
"That's what this book is," he said. "It's a journey through what that discussion was like."
In the book, Hege doesn't adjudicate the different theologies. Instead, he lays them out for the reader and points out that "good questions never die; only the responses change."
"Not only is the question of the resurrection a good question," he writes, "it is also perhaps the most important question for Christian theology. The responses to these questions must evolve because the context in which the questions are raised is also always evolving. What was the most faithful response for the ancient church might not be the most faithful response for the church at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is the task of theology to evaluate its context and develop faithful responses that address that same context."
The idea for the book grew out of Hege's master's thesis, which he wrote in 2001 while a student at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, about theologian Rudolf Bultmann. At the time Hege finished writing, Bultmann's views had become out of date and unfashionable. So Hege moved on to other topics.
Then two years ago, a Princeton Theological Seminary scholar published a nearly 1,000-page study of Bultmann's work, The Mission of Demythologizing. Hege, who's in his 10th year teaching at Butler, decided the time was right to revisit and revise his master's research. The result is this new book.
To some degree, the book is written for scholars, Hege said. But he's heard from people who aren't scholars who found it helpful.
"Especially people who aren't sure about that question," he said. "Anybody who is familiar with the broad contours of Christian thinking and has a little sense of the history of intellectual ideas from the last 300 years will be able to follow it easily."
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822
Professor Hege's Book Looks at the Resurrection
He documents theologians' arguments from the past 300 years.
He documents theologians' arguments from the past 300 years.
Fifteen Kids, Three Languages, One Computer
PUBLISHED ON Mar 26 2015
Deep in Kalchini, India, where cars are sparse and morning traffic consists of livestock, dogs, and locals on bikes, Ankur Gupta would make a weekly trip to an Internet café that had the only connection to the worldwide web in a three-hour-plus radius.
Upon arriving, he sat down on a bench and opened up his laptop computer. Some local children began to trickle over, crowding behind him to get a clear view of the screen.
Although on sabbatical for the semester, Gupta, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering, couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share some computer programming knowledge with the curious, wide-eyed children.
“There were 12 to 15 kids looking over my shoulder, just trying to figure out what the heck I was doing,” he said.
Through what he called plain coincidence, Gupta—who had gone to India to see his family—ended up spending an afternoon each week of his almost two-month visit teaching computer programming to local children.
Gupta spoke in Hindi, the children primarily spoke in Bengali, and all computer language was in English.
The triple language barrier was tough, but not impossible.
Hindi is an ancient language, and computer terminology doesn’t always translate, but Gupta found ways to explain the concepts so the children could understand.
“You just kind of wing it,” he said. “We were speaking to each other in languages that we didn’t understand, but when you are trying to learn something, you make it work.”
As the children memorized his computer code and latched onto the logic behind programming, Gupta said he noticed a shared revelation among his students—the world is boundless and up for grabs.
Before that, they were confined to a small town in West Bengal that Gupta described as a short, one-lane road lined with shops crammed in rows. Now, children who spend their days working on farms or shops connected to the area’s booming tea industry saw opportunities in fields they didn’t know even existed.
It was this that Gupta called his greatest contribution to the children of Kalchini. A teacher through and through, he said he prized the opportunity to open and inspire young minds.
“I just did this because I thought it was a chance to share things that I thought were cool about life with people who hadn’t seen them before,” Gupta said. “Ultimately, that’s the motivation for every teacher on campus.”
Fifteen Kids, Three Languages, One Computer
Computer Science Professor Ankur Gupta found himself teaching computer coding to young Indian children.
Computer Science Professor Ankur Gupta found himself teaching computer coding to young Indian children.
PUBLISHED ON Dec 16 2015
Chemistry Professor Michael Samide and Senior Conservation Scientist Gregory Smith will be the beneficiaries of a three-year, $75,000 grant that the Indianapolis Museum of Art has received to continue their work on preserving works of art.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant will allow Samide to spend the next two summers at the museum as an NEH faculty fellow. In addition, two Butler undergraduates will have the opportunity to work at the museum during the next two summers.
The work is centered around the development of a new method for rapid analysis of volatile organic compounds released from materials used in museum construction. The hope is to find a better quantitative method for material testing so that museums can safely design and build museum spaces that will not damage the art.
The work began as part of a sabbatical leave in 2014 and continued with Samide serving as a Dreyfus MUSE scholar in the summer of 2015. Preliminary results have been published and the data was recently presented as part of symposium on conservation and exhibition planning at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822