Ann W. Astell
is professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of six books, including The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (1990), and of numerous articles, including “‘Tota Pulchra Es’: Mary, the Song of Songs, and the Sacraments,” forthcoming in Marian Studies 68.
Mark S. Burrows
is a scholar of historical theology whose academic work explores the intersection of mysticism and poetics. He has had a long-standing interest in the medieval commentary tradition on the Song of Songs, especially its flowering among early Cistercians in the 12th century, about which he has written several articles. He is also a poet and award-winning translator of German literature. His recent publications include the first English translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s original draft of what became the first section of The Book of Hours, published under the title Prayers of a Young Poet (2016), as well as an English translation of the Iranian-German poet said’s 99 Psalms. The Chance of Home (2018) is a collection of his own poems, and together with Jon M. Sweeney he published Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart (2017) and Meister Eckhart’s Book of Secrets (2019), meditative poems inspired by Eckhart.
Emily R. Cain
is an assistant professor of history of Christianity at Loyola University Chicago. Her primary research focus is Christian late antiquity and its intersection with the Greco-Roman World, especially around the use of visual metaphors by early Christian authors.
Catherine Rose Cavadini
is an associate teaching professor at the University of Notre Dame, where she also directs the Master of Arts Program in Theology. She teaches courses on the saints, scriptural interpretation, and church history.
Rabia Gregory
is an associate professor of religious studies and affiliate faculty member of the Departments of Art History and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri. She is the author of Marrying Jesus in Medieval and Early Modern Northern Europe: Popular Culture and Religious Reform (2015) and has published articles in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Journal
Arthur Holder
is professor of Christian spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, where he was formerly dean and vice president for academic affairs. His many publications include The Venerable Bede: On the Song of Songs and Selected Writings (2011) in the Classics of Western Spirituality series and a number of articles and book chapters on Bede’s interpretation of the Song of Songs.
Jason Kalman
is Gottschalk-Slade Chair in Jewish Intellectual History and professor of classical Hebrew text and interpretation at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is also a research fellow at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa and codirector of huc Press. He earned a Ph.D. from McGill University. His publications focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Jewish exegesis of the Book of Job and Song of Songs.
Suzanne LaVere
is associate professor in the history department at Purdue University, Fort Wayne, Indiana. She is the author of Out of the Cloister: Scholastic Exegesis of the Song of Songs, 1100–1250 (2016).
Hannah W. Matis
is associate professor of church history at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. She is the author of The Song of Songs in the Early Middle Ages (2019).
Bernard McGinn
is the Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is widely regarded as the preeminent scholar of mysticism in the Western Christian tradition. He has also written extensively on Jewish mysticism, the history of apocalyptic thought, and medieval Christianity. In addition to his magisterial multi-volume The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (1991-present), he has written extensively on the ancient and medieval reception of the Song of Songs.
Timothy H. Robinson
is Lunger Associate Professor of Spiritual Resources and Disciplines at Brite Divinity School (Texas Christian University). He is the author of The Reverend
Karl Shuve
is associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of The Song of Songs and the Fashioning of Identity in Early Latin Christianity (2012).