Curriculum Vitae

Justin Ryan Hawkins


PhD Candidate in Religious Ethics and Political Theory
Yale University

EDUCATION

2024 Yale University

Ph.D. (M.A., M.Phil) in Ethics (Distinguished)

Dissertation: Crowned with Glory and Honor: The Virtue of Magnanimity, and Its Discontents

Committee: Jennifer Herdt (advisor), Kathryn Tanner, John Hare

Comprehensive Exam Fields:

  • History of Political Theory

  • Political Theology, Augustinian and Thomist

  • Political Hebraism

  • Magnanimity Among the Virtues

  • Divine Command and Eudaimonism

  • Bioethics: Human Nature and Human Enhancement

  • Disability Ethics

2015 Yale Divinity School

MAR, Philosophy of Religion

Thesis: The Medieval Puritan: Three Case Studies of Scholastic Themes in Jonathan Edwards

2011 Georgetown University

B.A., Government (Magna Cum Laude)


WORKING PAPERS IN PROGRESS:

“Christological Problems in Disability Theology, 25yrs after Nancy Eiesland,” (R+R)

“Is Tocqueville a Proto-Foucauldian? The Political Theology of the Prison,” (in progress)


BOOK REVIEWS:

Robin Login and Joshua Mauldin (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to Reinhold Niebuhr, in Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics. Link.

Jennifer Hockenberry, Wisdom’s Friendly Heart: Augustinian Hope for Skeptics and Conspiracy Theorists, in Augustinian Studies. Link.


CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS:

“All Significant Concepts of the Prison are Secularized Theological Concepts.” The Society of Christian Ethics Annual Meeting. January 2023

“Augustine’s Pseudo-Stoic Virtue of Magnanimity as a Response to Suffering and Trauma,” The American Academy of Religion National Conference (Denver, CO). November 2022

“Pusillanimity, Superiority, Magnanimity, Haecceity: A Reply to Miroslav Volf.” Yale Center for Faith and Cultural Consultation on “Striving for Superiority." September 2022.

“Is Jesus the Problem, or the Solution? Christological Problems in Disability Theology, 25yrs after Nancy Eiesland.” Society of Christian Ethics. January 2022.

“What Was Not Assumed Was Not Healed: A Christological and Soteriological Warning about Transhumanism.” National Meeting of the American Academy of Religion. Online. December 2020.

“The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time: Roko’s Basilisk, Antinatalism, and the Pascal’s Wager of Creating the Singularity” National Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, San Diego, CA (November 2019). ​

“Can Greatness of Soul be Taught? C.S. Lewis and Alexis de Tocqueville on Magnanimity and Education” Baylor Institute for Faith and Learning Conference, Waco, TX (October 2019). 

“Rene Girard on Why Christians Should Not be Populists” Henry Institute on Christianity and Politics, Calvin College, (April 2019).

 “The Trees of the Field Went Out to Anoint for Themselves a (Philosopher) King: The Reluctance of the Noble Ruler in Judges 9:8-15 and Plato’s Repubic” Kuyper Conference, Calvin College, (April 2019). 

“Religious Humility as the Grounds for Religious Liberty: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Contribution to a Theology of Democratic Religious Freedom” National Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Denver CO (November 2018). 

 “Forgetting the Language of Creation: Evangelical Climate Change Skepticism and the Natural Typology of Jonathan Edwards” Institute for Faith and Learning conference, Baylor University, (October 2018).

“Down Syndrome, the Glorified Body, and the Persistence of Personal Identity.” Princeton Theological Seminary Graduate Conference in Theology, February 10, 2018.

“Do Christians Need a Right to Religious Freedom? A Response to John Burgess,” delivered at Conference on ‘Two Conceptions of Freedom: Christian and Secular’ hosted by The Elm Institute and The Burke Center on Religion and Civil Society at Yale University (April 2016)

“Clarifying Religious Language: Yoram Hazony’s Use of Metaphor and Thomas Aquinas’s Analogia,” presented at Philosophical Investigation of the Hebrew Bible, Talmud and Midrash workshop, Jerusalem (July 2014).

“Søren Kierkegaard and Jonathan Edwards on Subjectivity and Religious Affections,” presented at Kierkegaard and the Present Age conference, Brigham Young University (November 2013).