Biography
Sarah Morice Brubaker – and please note that her last name is “Morice Brubaker,” not “Brubaker” -- teaches theology at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, OK and is finishing her Ph.D in theology at the University of Notre Dame. She received her MTS in 2003 from Duke Divinity School and her BA in Religious Studies from Yale University in 1999.
Sarah’s dissertation, which she is writing under the direction of Cyril O’Regan and Gerald McKenny, concerns postmetaphysical trinitarian theology and contemporary reflection on space and place… and the startling ways in which the former has often seemed simply to miss many of the best insights of the latter. At its most enjoyable moments writing her dissertation has felt like solving a murder mystery; at its worst moments it has simply felt like murder, but evidently this is typical! The principal characters in her dissertation are Jürgen Moltmann and Jean-Luc Marion; with Gaston Bachelard, Yi-Fu Tuan, Martin Heidegger, Augustine of Hippo, and Basil of Caesarea making cameos.
Since coming to Phillips in Fall 2009, Sarah has taught Christology, Introduction to Theology (online), and Feminist Theology (as a week-long concentrated course). In Fall 2010 she will be repeating Introduction to Theology and adding Doctrine of God. At Notre Dame, Sarah taught two sections of the required Foundations of Theology class taken by all first-year undergraduates. One of her proudest moments was receiving the highest-possible rating for “Cares about student learning” from all 75 of her frosh. She considers her own teaching most successful when students teach each other, in response to being confronted with a shared problem or task which she has helped to initiate. She is generally disinclined, in teaching, to position herself as the Cool Erudite Smartypants Expert at the front of the room.
Sarah tries to be aware of intersecting –isms; to keep her own significant privilege in check; and to teach and learn in ways that resist, rather than reinforce, structures of oppression. Relatedly, she is optimistic about virtual environments and their promise for theological education. Previously, under a pseudonym, Sarah contributed to one of the more visible feminist/body acceptance blogs, and she currently blogs at www.theseedbed.org. She has good friends whom she’s never been in the same room as. These experiences and others have taught her that online communities are not second-best substitutes for “real” face-to-face communities. Online communities have their own dangers and limitations; but also their own freedoms, safety, and means of access which face-to-face communities can lack.
Sarah’s husband Phil is an antiracism educator and stay-at-home dad. She has two young sons, ages 6 and 3, as well as a dog, a cat, two fish and (depending on the season) varying numbers of black swallowtails and monarchs in different stages of metamorphosis. She enjoys the Mary Russell mysteries by Laurie R. King, “Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar” starring Bob Bailey, good coffee, alcoves and nooks and side chapels, Murder She Wrote, West Wing, X Files, group sing-alongs, and cooking. She dislikes diet and body-shaming talk, posturing, competition, loud sudden noises, the comments section to pretty much any newspaper, travel, extroverting beyond her reserves, and weather that is very hot or very grey.