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Degrees:
Ph.D., Univ. of Chicago
M.A., Univ. of Chicago
B.A., Middlebury College
Samuel P. Catlin joined the Trinity College faculty in 2025 after previously teaching at the State University of New York at Buffalo and at the University of Chicago, where he earned a joint doctorate in Comparative Literature and Religious Studies in 2022.
An interdisciplinary scholar of religion and literature, he specializes in the study of Judaism, from rabbinic literature through modern Jewish thought and literature in the United States and Europe. He is especially interested in the uncanny power of religious traditions to determine putatively secular institutions, discourses, and categories in so-called Western modernity, as well as in philosophical and political problems concerning the concepts of tradition, authority, canon, and interpretation. In addition to academic journal articles, book chapters, and reviews, he writes for wider audiences in venues such as Jewish Currents, Parapraxis, and elsewhere.
Prof. Catlin's Religious Studies courses are text-centered and discussion-based, emphasizing the interrogation of received assumptions and the cultivation of the ability to read with patience, curiosity, and respect. These are vital skills not only for understanding religions in all their historical and global diversity, but also for navigating contemporary social and political life in an increasingly mediated world where the grounds of power, authority, and legitimacy seem only to be growing more mysterious to us. |
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Jews and Judaism from antiquity to the present
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Religion and literature
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History and theory of interpretation
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Modern Jewish philosophy and literature
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US Jewish literature and culture
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Rabbinic literature (Midrash and Talmud)
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Theories and methods for Religious Studies
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Political, legal, moral, and social philosophy
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Holocaust history, memory, and representation
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Modern Jewish philosophy and literature
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US Jewish literature and culture
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Rabbinic literature (Midrash and Talmud)
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Secularism and the post-secular
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Continental philosophy and critical theory
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Psychoanalysis
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Queer theory and gender and sexuality studies
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Theories of group identity (religious, ethnic, national, racial)
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Postcolonial thought
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History of literary theory and criticism
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Critical higher education studies and history of US higher education
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The US "culture wars"
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Selected Publications:
- “Literalism, Pornography, Dissent,” on Anthony Petro, Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Culture Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025), Journal of the American Academy of Religion (forthcoming 2026).
- “Auerbach's Abraham(s): Biblical Narrative and the Genesis of Critical Reading,” Prooftexts 42.1 (Spring 2026): 63–95.
- “Text,” in Sarah Hammerschlag, ed., Critical Terms for Religious Studies, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2025): 403–418.
- “Milton's Terrorism: Literature and Religion After 9/11,” in Sheera Talpaz and Anuradha Needham, eds., The Routledge Companion to Cultural Text and the Nation (Abingdon: Routledge, 2025): 223–235.
- “Canceling the World,” on Adrian Daub, The Cancel Culture Panic: How an American Obsession Went Global (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2024), The New Republic (December 2024 print issue): 58–61.
- “The Campus Does Not Exist,” Parapraxis 4 (Summer 2024): 40–47.
- “Lee Edelman's Lesson,” on Lee Edelman, Bad Education: Why Queer Theory Teaches Us Nothing (Durham: Duke University Press, 2023), Parapraxis 3 (Winter 2024): 32–39.
- “Death of an Author,” Political Theology Network, symposium on the republication of Susan Taubes, Divorcing (New York: NYRB, 2020) (June 9, 2023): https://politicaltheology.com/death-of-an-author/.
- “Rabbinic Exegesis and Literary Theory,” in Naomi Seidman, ed., Oxford Bibliographies in Jewish Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023): https://academic.oup.com/reference/62376/reference-article-abstract/554967700.
- “'No Sin to Limp': Critique as Error in Geoffrey Hartman's Essays on Midrash,” Naharaim 16.1 (June 2022): 53–77.
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- CTL Fellowship, Center for Teaching and Learning, Trinity College, 2026–2027, project title: "Rethinking College-Level Holocaust Studies for the Present"
- Summer Fellowship, Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization, Holocaust Educational Foundation, Northwestern University, 2025
- Faculty Research Grant, Gender Institute, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, 2024-2025, project title: "Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Desires: Judaism, Jewishness, and the Secular Epistemology of the Closet"
- Junior Fellowship, Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion, University of Chicago Divinity School, 2021-2022
- Dissertation Fellowship, Joyce Z. and Jacob Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies, University of Chicago, 2021-2022
- The Phi Beta Kappa Prize, Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society, Middlebury College, 2015
- Theodore S. Woolsey Prize for Outstanding Work in the Study of Sacred Texts, Department of Religion, Middlebury College, 2015
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