My religion professors (which was my major) at Reed College in the early 1980s were John Kenney and Bill Long (and sociologist John Pock) among others.
I was a student at Reed from 1979-1985.
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Here's a bit about them:
The Kenney Years15
Despite students' enthusiasm for the department in its early years, and the many contributions of early Religion faculty members and students to the formation of the department's structure and sense of mission, perhaps no event was more central to the department's continuing success than the appointment of John Peter Kenney16as assistant professor of Religion and Humanities in 1981. One year later, with the departure of Prof. Segal, the department comprised only two members, Prof. Kenney, and the newly appointed Dr. Rev. William R. Long, a historian of early Christianity. The two had been graduate students together at Brown University. For fifteen years Prof. Kenney worked to solidify institutional support for the young department, to strengthen the department of Religion's ties to the departments of philosophy and history, and to integrate the discipline's perspectives into the Humanities program. In the early 1980's, a number of the faculty, perhaps unfamiliar with critical approaches to the study of religion, continued to harbor serious reservations about a "department of religion" at "non-sectarian" Reed.
Under Prof. Kenney's oversight, the department's mission continued to be expressed in terms of discrete traditions and the variety of methods of critical inquiry, but the curriculum, perhaps more accurately to reflect the interests of the Religion faculty, was divided between the philosophy of religion and history of religions. 1986 witnessed the arrival of the distinguished scholar of Sanskrit and Indian religious culture, Edwin Gerow (now emeritus Professor of Religion) and, with him, the introduction of Asian religions to the curriculum. Steven Wasserstrom, who would, in 1991 be awarded the Moe and Izetta Tonkon Chair in Judaic Studies and Humanities, was also hired in 1986 as a visiting assistant professor of Judaic Studies (religion & history). His position in 1987 became a tenure-track position, and it was the first and only permanent position in Judaic studies in Oregon through 2000. The department's mission statement was formally broadened in 1989 to reflect what had in fact been the case since the arrival of Prof. Gerow. No longer limited to the major religious traditions of the West, the department formally purposed to introduce students to major "world" traditions. With Prof. Kenney's acceptance of an appointment as dean of St. Michael's College, the John Peter Kenney era concluded in 1996.
http://www.reed.edu/religion/department-history.html*
And here's Prof John Kenney's current academic position and web site:
John Kenney, PhD
Professor of Religious Studies
View Curriculum VitaePh.D. Brown University
A.B. Bowdoin College
A.B. Bowdoin College
I studied ancient philosophy at Bowdoin, majoring in Classics and Philosophy. I did graduate work in Philosophy at the University Pennsylvania, and then completed my Ph.D. at Brown in Religious Studies. After a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard, I taught for 15 years at Reed as Professor of Religion and Humanities. I came to Saint Michael's to be Dean of the College in 1995. Since 2006 I have been teaching full-time as Professor of Religious Studies. I also offer courses in the Humanities Program
Areas of Expertise:
Philosophy of Religion, Ancient Christianity
Courses I Teach:
- Ancient and Medieval Civilization
- Catholic Christianity
- Medieval Christianity
- Understandings of God
- The Problem of Evil
- Christian Mysticism
http://www.smcvt.edu/pages/get-to-know-us/faculty/kenney-john.aspx
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I also studied German at Reed, and during the course of this study, lived in Munich for a year (1981-'82), in Studentenstadt, while taking courses at Ludwig Maximillian Universitaet, and, through this Reed College program, in Olympiazentrum, (so in a way, German was my minor, but Reed doesn't really have/offer minors that I recall). I spent an extra 2 1/2 months in Germany after the study year abroad ended living with a Quaker family, the Kruegers, whom I had met through the little Quaker Meeting in Munich, living in their small apartment in Garching, about 10 kilometers north of Munich.
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My Reed College senior thesis was in the social science of religion / feminist theology, and I examined Rosemary Ruether's book "Sexism and God-talk" (so it was a kind of feminist thesis).
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IN MEMORIAM
John C. Pock [sociology 1955–98]
http://www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/june2012/articles/features/pok.html
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/june2012/articles/features/pok.html
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In one "Sociology of Religion" course, Pock suggested we visit churches as a kind of ethnographic field work, and, for a class project, invent our own religion.
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I spent a lot of time in the Reed College library, and enjoyed my friends there, and living in "Reed houses" (communal houses, or collectives, or even kinds of hippy communes, I'd say), but which weren't owned by Reed College, and enjoyed too the open ended-ness of Reed's vision for "the life of the mind," and a rigorous liberal arts education, but was ambivalent about my studies themselves.
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There is a kind of freedom in thinking/thought at Reed, that is in its culture / discourse / milieu (perhaps with its focus on the scholarly text i.e. writing).
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Here's Professor John Peter Kenney (in 2015 and 2016), on Augustine, and Aquinas (both authors in the Great Books' series too), and teaching about very similar themes re mysticism:
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President's Lecture Series
John Peter Kenney, Ph.D.
Professor of Religious Studies, Saint Michael's College
"The Mysticism of St. Augustine"
Annual Augustine Lecture
Tuesday, March 22, 2016, 7:00 p.m.
Salon, La Maison Francaise
John Peter Kenney, Ph.D., 3/22/16 from Assumption College on Vimeo.
https://vimeo.com/160140427
“The Mysticism of Saint Augustine” by John Peter Kenney
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXeF_F1WI08
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I was interested in mysticism at Reed, as well as in the context of the unprogrammed Quaker Meetings (i.e. Howard Brinton in "Friends for 300 Years"). I was also interested in mysticism in Germany taking a course at LMU on Meister Eckhart from a Professor there.
I'd trace a connection between my ongoing focus on generating the neurophysiology of loving bliss (in a non theistic f/Friendly way too) and my interest in mysticism in the early 1980s.
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