Bradley Onishi

Associate Professor

On leave for 2021-2022 academic year

Office: Ladd 210
Phone: (518) 580-5408
Email: bonishi@skidmore.edu

Degrees:

Teaching and Research Interests:

Courses taught include God, Sex, and Love in the History of Christianity; Religious Approaches to Death and Dying; Re-enchantment and the Secular; Religion and Politics in Contemporary American Society; Atheism; Comparative Mysticism.
My research has focused on two distinct, but related areas. In the first instance, I have explored the resonances between the Christian mystical traditions and contemporary philosophy. This has resulted in two volumes, Christian Mysticism: An Introduction to Contemporary Theoretical Approaches and Mysticism in the French Tradition, that bring medieval mystics in conversation with modern philosophers.
Recently, my focus has been on different approaches to secularity. I explore how philosophers of religion have offered various “enchanted” secularities by way of engagement with religious texts, traditions, and communities. My hope is that such work will open new pathways for understanding the relationship between the secular and the religious in the contemporary context.

Books:

2017: The Birth of World: Philosophy of Religion and the Sacrality of the Secular, Columbia University Press.
2009: Louise Nelstrop, with Kevin Magill and Bradley B. Onishi, Christian Mysticism: An Introduction to Contemporary Theoretical Approaches. London: Ashgate, 2009.

Articles and Book Chapters:

2017: “A Secular Eschatology: The Cosmology of Being-Towards-Death,” in Religions.
2017: “Secular Saturation and the Re-enchantment of the World: Reading Jean-Luc Marion Otherwise,” in Louvain Studies.
2017: “Between a Saint and a Phenomenologist: Hart’s Criticisms of Marion,” in Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy of Religion.
2017: “Philosophy and Theology: Emmanuel Falque and the New Theological Turn” in Evil, Fallenness, Finitude.
2016: “The Beginning, not the End: On Continental Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies,” in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84:4.
2011: “Heidegger, Information, and Bodies: Tracing Visions of the Posthuman” Sophia: International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 50:1.
2011: “Liberal Protestantism” in The Encyclopedia of Global Religion. Mark Juergensmeyer and Wade Clark Roof, eds. London: Sage Press.

2015: Mysticism in the French Tradition: Eruptions from France. London: Ashgate.
2015: Recherches philosophiques 1:1 (September 2015). Perpignan, France: Artège Éditions.
2012: Medieval Mystical Theology 21:1 (June 2012). Abingdon, UK: Taylor and Francis.

Translations:

2015: Emmanuel Falque, “Theology and Phenomenology: An Essay on Frontiers,” in Mysticism in the French Tradition. Louise Nelstrop and Bradley B. Onishi, eds. London: Ashgate Publishing.

News and Media:

Co-host, with Daniel Miller, of Straight White American Jesus (SWAJ), a podcast on religion and politics affiliated with the Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life (UCSB).
“We are not Spared: The Leftovers Finale,” Huffington Post, Entertainment Section.
“Donald Trump, George Takei, and ‘Operation Wetback,’” Huffington Post, Entertainment Section.
“Life After Death? A Religious Studies Professor Becomes a Student,” Huffington Post, Religion Section.
“Ohana No Ka Oi: Our All-American Non-Religious Christmas Ritual,” Huffington Post, Religion Section.
“The Office: Finding the Sacred in the Everyday,” Huffington Post, Religion Section.
“Occupy Wall Street, Nirvana, and the Kingdom of God?” Huffington Post, Religion Section.
“Worshiping the Cup? Religious Devotion and the World Cup,” Huffington Post, Religion Section.
“I Once was Found and Now I am Lost: Reflections on the Religious and Spiritual Dimensions of Lost,” Huffington Post, front page and Daily Brief.