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Areas of Specialization: American Philosophy, Christian and Jewish Ethics, Interreligious Dialogue
Scholarly Activities. Jacob L. Goodson is Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Ethics at the College of William & Mary. His PhD is in philosophical theology from the University of Virginia. He taught biomedical ethics and theories of religion for a semester at Hampden-Sydney College in Farmville, Virginia. His courses at William & Mary include "Ecology and Ethics," "Medicine and Ethics," "Religion and Ethics," and "Warfare and Ethics."
Jacob has published scholarly articles in The American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, Contemporary Pragmatism, Perspectives in Religious Studies, The Streams of William James, The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning, and The Journal of Textual Reasoning. He co-edited (with Brad Elliott Stone) Richard Rorty and the Religious: Christian Engagements with a Secular Philosopher (Cascade, 2012). His first manuscript, tentatively entitled The Hermeneutical Virtues: Humility, Patience, and Prudence, addresses questions concerning the logic of implementing biblical narratives within contemporary moral and theological investigations.
Currently, he is working on two writing projects. First, for the Cascade Companion Series, he is writing An Introduction to Scriptural Reasoning. Second, he is co-authoring (with Brad Elliott Stone) a book on Prophetic Pragmatism -- which introduces readers to the moral, philosophical, and theological prospects of prophetic reasoning within the current world.
Jacob serves as the general editor for The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning, an academic peer-reviewed online journal that fosters scholarly investigations concerning the role of sacred texts within Jewish, Christian, and Muslim relations. In 2009, he co-directed (with Peter Ochs) the Scriptural Reasoning Training Session at the University of Virginia. He co-chairs (with Anna Moreland) the Scriptural Reasoning Group at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting of the American Academy of Religion. He oversees the Scriptural Reasoning Academic Network, which nurtures the pedagogical and scholarly fruits of the method and theory of Scriptural Reasoning.
He has chapters included in the following books: “The Quest for Perfection in the Sport of Baseball: The Magnanimous Individual or the Magnanimous Team?” in Sports and Christianity: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Nick Watson & Andre Parker, (Routledge, 2012); "The Ethics of Counter-Insurgency in The Wire," in Theology and The Wire, ed. by Jonathan Tran & Myles Werntz, (Cascade, 2013); and “Can Christian Theologians Reason Post-Metaphysically?: Jürgen Habermas and the Semblance of Intellectual Virtue,” in Groundless Gods: The Theological Prospects of Post-Metaphysical Philosophy, ed. by Eric Hall & Hartmut von Sass, (forthcoming).