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. |