Faculty

Rev. Dr. John J. Ranieri
Director, University Honors Program
Thomas and Ruth Sharkey Professor of Humanities
Professor of Philosophy

Fr. Ranieri is interested in the relationship between the biblical tradition and political philosophy. Influenced by the thought of René Girard, he has been exploring the role of violence in philosophy and religion. In addition to Girard, Fr. Ranieri also has a special interest in the work of Bernard Lonergan. Fr. Ranieri is the author of Eric Voegelin and the Good Society (University of Missouri Press, 1995). He has published “Modernity and the Jewish Question: What Leo Strauss Learned from Nietzsche,” which can be found in Politics and Apocalypse (Michigan State University Press, 2007). His book, Disturbing Revelation: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Bible, has recently been published by University of Missouri Press, 2009.

 
Dr. Michael Maloney
Associate Director, University Honors Program
Lecturer, Department of Religion

Michael Maloney is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion. He holds a Ph.D. from Fordham University in Systematic Theology. His research interests are in the area of philosophical theology, specifically conceptions of the God-world relation as these are presented in the pagan, Christian, and Eastern traditions. He is also interested in how different philosophical allegiances shape theological reflection. Within the Catholic intellectual tradition his allegiance, and his training, is in the tradition of Thomism, and more narrowly, in the work of those thinkers who would either be classified as representative of, or sympathetic to, the project of Transcendental Thomism, such as the theologian Karl Rahner and the philosopher Bernard Lonergan.

 
Dr. Dermot Quinn
Associate Director, University Honors Program
Professor of History

Before coming to Seton Hall in 1990 Dr. Quinn taught at Amherst College in Massachusetts and at Oxford University. He has degrees from Trinity College, Dublin and Oxford University. His first book, Patronage and Piety: English Roman Catholics and Politics, 1850-1900, was published in 1993 by Stanford University Press. Another book, Understanding Northern Ireland, was published by Baseline Books, also in 1993. Professor Quinn is a native of Derry, Northern Ireland. He has published articles and reviews in Recusant History, The Chesterton Review, The American Historical Review, Labor History, The Review of Politics, The Welsh History Review, and other scholarly journals. Professor Quinn’s third book, The Irish in New Jersey: Four Centuries of American Life, was published by Rutgers University Press in 2004, winning New Jersey Author award for scholarly non-fiction in 2005.

 
Dr. Gregory Floyd
Director, Center for Catholic Studies
University Core Curriculm
Teaching Fellow

Dr. Floyd specializes in 19th and 20th century European philosophy. His scholarship focuses on the history and methodology of phenomenology and hermeneutics, as well as the philosophy of religion. He has written about the way in which religious claims and traditions provide an opportunity for philosophy to reflect on the particular nature of its own investigation in terms of both its limits and its possibilities. His recent publications include, “Critical Realism, Facticity, and Psychic Conversion” in Intellect, Affect, and God (Marquette, 2021); “The Sense of Phenomenology” in INPR (2020); (editor) The Catholic Reception of Continental Philosophy in North America (Univ. of Toronto Press, 2020) and Cor ad Cor: Modern Culture and The Catholic University (2021). More broadly, his areas of teaching and scholarship include the history of philosophy, philosophy and literature, and the thought of Bernard Lonergan. Dr. Floyd holds BA from Notre Dame in Great Books and Spanish Language and Literature, an MA in Theology from Notre Dame.  He received his MA and PhD in Philosophy from Boston College.

 
Dr. Eric Johnston
School of Theology
Associate Professor of Undergraduate Theology

Dr. Johnston’s research interests are related to spirituality and political philosophy.  Recently he has been particularly interested in Aquinas’s theology of grace.  Housed in the School of Theology where he is an Associate Professor, Dr. Johnston’s classes have included New Life in Christ: Introduction to Catholic Morals, Introduction to Liturgy and Sacraments, The Culture of Life, Ecclesiology, and Christianity, and Culture in Dialogue. His recent articles have appeared in The Thomist, Logos, Crisis, and Homiletic and Pastoral Review.   Dr. Johnston earned his B.A. in Theology and Catholic Studies from the University of St. Thomas, MN and his M.A. (in Systematic Theology) is from Boston College.  His Ph.D. (in Medieval Theology) is from The Catholic University of America where his doctoral dissertation was on “The Role of Aristotelian Biology in Thomas Aquinas’s Theology of Marriage.”

 
Dr. Arundhati Sanyal
Department of English
Senior Faculty Associate

Dr. Sanyal holds an Master of Arts in English from the University of Calcutta, a Master of Arts in English Literature of the 19th Century from Rutgers and a PhD (also in English Literature of the 19th Century) from The City University of New York.  In addition to teaching in the Honors Program (the 3rd Colloquium on the Early Modern World), Dr. Sanyal teaches Freshman Composition, Journey of Transformation and upper level courses in British and American Literature.  She is the Director of the SHU Writing Center.

 
Rev. Nicholas Sertich
Director, Department of Campus Ministry

Fr. Sertich was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark in 2020, and since July 1, 2022, has served as the Director of Campus Ministry at Seton Hall. Fr. Sertich holds a B.A. from Seton Hall (2015) and is an alumnus of the University Honors Program. Fr. Sertich also holds an S.T.B. from the Pontifical Gregorian University (2019) and an S.T.L. from the Pontifical Lateran University – Accademia Alfonsiana (2021) in Moral Theology. Prior to returning to Seton Hall as the Director of Campus Ministry, Fr. Sertich served at St. Peter the Apostle Parish in River Edge and St. Paul RC Church in Ramsey. He currently also serves in part-time parish ministry at St. Peter’s in River Edge, Sacred Heart in Rochelle Park, and St. Agnes in Clark.

 
Dr. Peter Shoemaker
Associate Provost for
Undergraduate Education and Assessment

A scholar of 17th century French literature and culture, Dr. Shoemaker is the author of over 15 peer-reviewed journal articles and two scholarly books. Areas of special interest include rhetoric and literature, the social history of literature, the novel and the Moralists. He received his Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Princeton University in 1997, where he was a Jacob Javitts Fellow and the recipient of a French Government Fellowship (Bourse Chateaubriand) that enabled him to study at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris from 1994 – 1995. He also holds an M.A. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Princeton and a B.A. in French from the University of Chicago.

 
Dr. Todd Stockdale
University Core Curriculum
Teaching Fellow

Dr. Stockdale’s research interests rest within the discipline of practical theology. As a practical theologian, he is drawn to the complexities present in lived Christianity and therefore seeks  to investigate theological themes through the particularities of concrete situations. This means that much of his work has been cross-disciplinary in nature, drawing upon various qualitative research methodologies from the social sciences-(participant observation, in-depth interviews and focus groups) to explore a range of theological issues.  Dr. Stockdale holds a Master of Arts degree from DallasTheological Seminary, a Master of Theology degree from The University of Edignburgh and a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh.  Recent scholarly publications include “Hearing a Fuller Story: Ethnography, Reflexivity, and Church,” “Making Connections: Exploring Methodist Deacons’ Perspectives on Contemporary Diaconal Ministry,” and “The Contemporary Nature of Diaconal Ministry in British Methodism.”

 
Professor Chelsea Wegrzyniak
Adjunct Professor

Professor Wegrzyniak holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Idaho State University. She earned her M.A. in Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee where her culminating exams were in the area of Feminist Ethics. She has taught at Fordham University and most recently at Vanderbilt University. Recent presentations include Character from Commitments: A Project-Based Account of Personal Ethics from Bernard Williams (Vanderbilt University); From “the Feminine” to the Feminist: Finding a Contribution to Feminist Ethics in “Totality and Infinity” (Fordham Philosophical Society); Social Contention Through Capability Demonstration: A Pragmatist Answer to Bias in Moral Principle Formation (Long Island Philosophical Society).

 
Dr. Youssef Yacoubi
Department of Languages Literatures and Cultures
Assistant Professor & Director, Arabic Studies Program

Dr. Yacoubi is a comparatist and critical theorist interested in the literary, theological and cultural intersections between Mediterranean, Islamic, Arab, British and North American traditions of thought and critique. He has taught at the Ohio State University as an assistant professor in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and comparative studies where he was a Denman Undergraduate Research Forum Judge, as Faculty Representative/Examiner, College of Arts and Humanities, and as an advisor for the Undergraduate Fulbright Campus Committee. He has also taught Arabic and Comparative Literature at Bard College and at Hofstra University where he directed the Arabic, and the study abroad programs. He taught in Bard’s First Year Seminar Program and at the Bard College Prison Initiative.

His teaching interests cover modern and classical Arabic literatures, Arab-American literature, Middle Eastern/ North African intellectual and political history, Francophone/British/Anglophone modern literatures, postcolonial criticism and theory, and philosophy of religion.

Dr. Yacoubi is the author of The Play of Reasons: the Sacred and the Profane in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction, (Peter Lang, 2012) which argues that Salman Rushdie’s eclectic and hybridized work can be situated within an Islamic genealogy of theological and literary traditions. He has published articles on the works of Salman Rushdie, Taha Hussayn, Edward Said, Iqbal Ahmad and Mohammed Arkoun. His research focuses on the interface between critical theories and Islamic thought; the relationship between literature and theology, faith and reason, and questions of democratization through liberal arts within the contexts of the Arab and Islamic worlds. He is on the editorial board of Ikhtilaf: the Journal of Critical Humanities and Social Studies, (Mohammad 1st University, Oujda, Morocco) and is the editor of The Society for Contemporary Thought and the Islamicate World Journal (SCTIW Review).