Steering Committee
Peter Casarella
Steering Committee Chair
Peter Casarella serves as Professor of Theology at The Divinity School at Duke University. His research focuses on systematic theology, world religions, and the world church. Prior to joining Duke Divinity, he was an associate professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, and he has served as director of the Latin American North American Church Concerns (LANACC) project in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. At DePaul University, he was founding Director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology (CWCIT). He has published widely on medieval Christian Neoplatonism, contemporary theological aesthetics, intercultural thought, and the Hispanic/Latino presence in the US Catholic Church. His books include a monograph, Word as Bread: Language and Theology in Nicholas of Cusa, and a forthcoming collection of essays, Reverberations of the Word: Wounded Beauty in Global Catholicism.
Casarella has served as president of The American Cusanus Society, The Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS), and the Academy of Catholic Theologians (ACT). He is currently serving a second five-year term on the International Roman Catholic-Baptist World Alliance Ecumenical Dialogue and served also on the Roman Catholic-World Communion of Reformed Churches Dialogue.
Eric D. Barreto
Member
Eric D. Barreto is Weyerhaeuser Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary and an ordained Baptist minister. The author of Ethnic Negotiations: The Function of Race and Ethnicity in Acts 16 (Mohr Siebeck, 2010), the co-author of Exploring the Bible (Fortress Press, 2016), and editor of Reading Theologically (Fortress Press, 2014), he is also a regular contributor to ONScripture, the Huffington Post, Working Preacher, and Enter the Bible. For more, go to ericbarreto.com and follow him on Twitter.
Adriana Nieto
Member
Adriana Nieto is a daughter of Denver’s dust. Her ancestors have migrated up and down the path from El Paso, Texas to Denver, Colorado for generations. She was born in El Paso, Texas with maternal roots in Las Cruces, New Mexico and paternal roots throughout New Mexico. Adriana Nieto is currently the Chair & Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She has been faculty in the Chicana/o Studies department for over 15 years, first as an adjunct, then full time tenure track beginning in fall of 2009. She earned her BA with a double major in Women Studies and Latin American Studies, and MA from the University of New Mexico in Latin American Studies with concentrations in Borderlands History and Gender Studies. She earned her PhD in the Joint Doctoral Program in Religious and Theological Studies at the Iliff School of Theology and University of Denver in 2009.
Her teaching and research interests include Latina spiritualities and practices; mental health among Xicanas in early 20th Century New Mexico; women of color feminisms; Chicana Protestants in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands; oral history; and most recently water in the ‘West’, with special interest in acequia culture and practices in southern Colorado . She strives to integrate the demands of teaching, mentorship and scholarship while also being a mother, partner and healthy muxer.
Ahida Pilarski
Member
Ahida Calderón Pilarski is Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and Chair of the Theology Department at Saint Anselm College. She serves on the Board of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS), and in the Society of Biblical Literature’s “Latino/a and Latin American Biblical Hermeneutics” section and in the “Committee for Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession” (CUREMP). Pilarski has edited or co-edited Judges (Wisdom Commentary Series [WCS], 2018), 2 Kings (WCS, 2019), By Bread Alone: Reading the Bible Through the Eyes of the Hungry (Fortress, 2014), Pentateuco: Introducción al Antiguo Testamento/La Biblia Hebrea en Perspectiva Latinoamericana (Verbo Divino, 2014), and has published many papers on the prophets, Latinx and Latin American hermeneutics, and feminist interpretation.
Daniel Ramírez
Member
Daniel Ramírez is Associate Professor of American Religions at Claremont Graduate University. Ramírez previously taught at the University of Michigan and Arizona State University. His research interests lie in U.S. and Latin American religious history and culture and the Reformation en español. Ramírez has taught a vast range of courses within these broad fields, including American Evangelicalisms and Fundamentalisms; Religion, Migration, and Transnationalism; History of the Hispanic Heterodox: Latina/o Religious History; Religious Pathways of the Borderlands; and Film and Religious History, among others. His book, Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press), received the 2017 Pneuma Book of the Year Award from the Society of Pentecostal Studies. Ramírez currently serves as president of the American Society of Church History.
Luis Rivera-Rodríguez
Member
Luis R. Rivera-Rodríguez is Associate Professor of Theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (UMC). He served as the Academic Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Garrett-Evangelical from 2014-2019. Rivera maintains a thorough and diverse experience of academic teaching, administration, and institutional leadership. Rivera received his Th.D. (1993) and Th.M. (1981) from Harvard Divinity School, his M.Div. (1978) from Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico, and his B.A. (1973) from the University of Puerto Rico. He is co-editor of The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theologians (English, Spanish, and Portuguese editions). His research, teaching, and publications focus is systematic theology, specifically Latino/a and Diaspora theologies. Rivera was a faculty member at the Evangelical Seminary in Puerto Rico (1986-1995) and at McCormick Theological Seminary (1995-2013) where he also served as Academic Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs (2008-2013).