Fall 2025 Perspectives Faculty Updates
Fred Parrella
Our beloved colleague, Professor Emeritus Fred Parrella, passed away on October 17, 2025 following a rapid health decline after heart surgery. Fred was a fixture not just in our department, but on the SCU campus, where his joyful presence, love of teaching, and commitment to Santa Clara were evident in all that he did. His classes on the Theology of Marriage and the Theology of Death were among the most popular in our department and across campus. His impact stretched across several generations of students. In Theology of Marriage he taught students whose parents had also taken the class with him! Fred was a Tillich scholar and long served as the secretary/treasurer of the Tillich Society. On campus he was honored with the Faculty Senate Award and was also active with the Phi Beta Kappa chapter.
Gaurika Mehta
Gaurika Mehta presented a paper at the "Plantation Worlds" conference at UCSC. In her paper, "Fugitive Archives: A View of South Asian Studies and Black Studies from the Caribbean Plantation," Gaurika followed the figure of the fugitive along the edges of the archives of indenture and slavery to propose new areas of intersections between Black Studies and South Asian Studies. She also published an article titled "Churning the Kalapani: Dark Water Histories, Oceanic Origins, and Marine Deities of the Indo-Caribbean Madrasi Diaspora" (Purana 2025). The article draws on archival and ethnographic materials to consider how the diasporic dark waters (kalapani) invite us to think with opacity, motion, and displacement (in place of transparency, stability, and the geography of centers and margins). The article also has some photographs of the Madrasis performing their rituals along the Atlantic waters of Jamaica Bay, Brooklyn.
Elizabeth Drescher
Elizabeth Drescher presented "Seeing Spirits of Silicon Valley in Place: Mural Art as Aesthetic and Epistemological Infrastructure in San José, California" at a brown bag lunch on Oct. 14. She presented her research involving a cross-sectional study analyzing religious and spiritual elements of murals as aesthetic and epistemological infrastructure in gentrifying San José neighborhoods. Fieldwork on 100+ murals showed religious imagery—from the Virgin of Guadalupe and Buddhist landscapes to local “saints”—that anchored identity, memory, and belonging. Seen through infrastructure theory, living religion, and spatial justice, her research argues murals are not decorative but constitutive, resisting placelessness imposed by corporate development and expanding scholarship on public art, material religion, and spatial justice.
Daniel Morgan
Daniel Morgan published an article, "More Beneficial than Karl Marx: ʿUbaidullāh Sindhī and Modern Receptions of Shāh Valīullāh of Delhi," in the Journal of Urdu Studies. The article examines an innovative Urdu-language tażkirah (commemorative anthology) entitled Shāh Valīullāh aur Un kī Siyāsī Taḥrīk (Shāh Walī Allāh and his Political Movement) published in 1942 by the famous Deoband-trained scholar and anti-colonial activist ʿUbaidullāh Sindhī (d. 1944). The essay shows that Sindhī’s goal in writing the text was to unite modernist and traditionalist factions amongst South Asia's Muslims by demonstrating that they shared a common progenitor in Shāh Walī Allāh, whom he presents as embodying Islam's radically anti-imperialist and socialist teachings.
Nicholas Hayes-Mota
Nicholas Hayes-Mota published a book chapter in the volume Organizing Visions: Social Ethics & Broad-Based Solidarity Activism, which has just been released. His chapter is entitled "Traditions in Organizing: A Social Catholic Perspective."
On Sept. 29, Nicholas was a featured panelist for an event at Georgetown University, "Renewing Politics from the Ground Up: Lessons from Latino Organizing." This was a public dialogue sponsored by Georgetown's Initiative for Catholic Social Thought. Other participants included seasoned organizers (Joanna Arellano-Gonzalez and Rosie Villegas-Smith) and a veteran political campaigner (Julie Chávez Rodríguez) who also happens to be Cesar Chávez's granddaughter. Over 900 people tuned in for the livestream. The video from the event is available here.
On Oct. 20, Nicholas was a special guest and featured speaker at the West/Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation's Regional Seminar on "Public Money for the Public Good," gathering approximately 200 leaders from 34 community organizations around the U.S.
On Nov. 21, Nicholas presented a draft book chapter at an authors' workshop hosted at Harvard Divinity School, for an upcoming edited volume entitled A Faith that Does Justice: Pragmatism and the Catholic Imagination. His chapter was called "Community Organizing, Pragmatism, and the Catholic Tradition: Alinsky's Synthesis."
David DeCosse
David DeCosse, director of the Religious & Catholic Ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, published an essay, “'Unguarded Eyes': The Doorway to a Politics of Conscience." Views are his own. David also received the Spirit of Ignatius Award at the Staff Recognition event in June 2025.
Claudia Moutray
Claudia Moutray published a chapter entitled “I am the Mother, not the Other,” in an anthology about infertility. It is an excerpt from a memoir she has been writing.
Eugene Schlesinger
In September, Eugene Schlesinger travelled to Thessaloniki, Greece to participate in the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network's Conference "Christian Identity, Power, and Dissent After Nicaea," where he presented the paper "Nicaea and the Necessity, but Inadequacy of 'Sufficiency.'" This paper was the first of three explorations of the themes of agonism, contestation, and disagreement in negotiating Christian recognition, unity, and identity.
In October, it was off to Belgium, to participate in KU Leuven's conference, "Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology XV: Catholicity, Theology, and the University," where he presented his paper "The Agonies of Catholicism." October also saw participation in a multi-day meeting of the Episcopal Church's Standing Commission on Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations, where Gene's work is currently focused on strategies for the success of a proposed agreement of full communion between the Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church.
November saw travels to Boston for the North American Academy of Ecumenists, where he presented the paper, "Unity, to What End and at What Cost?," which continues the theme of contestation and disagreement, this time with a focus on ensuring that Christian communities do not preserve their unity at the expense of the wellbeing of their more vulnerable members (particularly the LGBTQ community). While in Boston, Gene also attended the American Academy of Religion, for which he serves on the steering committee for the Vatican II Studies Session.
Along the way, he managed to finish up the manuscript for a book on the liturgical calendar, which should eventually be published by Paulist Press. He continues his research on the political activities of theologians of the 20th Century ressourcement movement, particularly the French Jesuit resistance to fascism, and the French Dominican commitment to solidarity with workers.
Karl Lampley
Karl Lampley published an article online in August 2025 entitled: “Black Theology and #Black Lives Matter: The Contemporary Struggle for Freedom and Justice” in Black Theology: An International Journal.