Christina Day Eickenroht

PHD CANDIDATE

Hometown: Houston, Texas, USA

Education: BA Christian Literature and Theology; minor in Art History, Georgetown University
MDiv, concentration in Christianity and the Arts, Regent College

Academic Interests
Under the supervision of Professor Judith Wolfe, Christina’s PhD research centers on paradox and eschatology in the novels of Frederick Buechner. Christina traces Buechner’s literary treatment of the profound paradoxes that mark our humanity and human experience—paradoxes such as sacred and profane, saint and sinner, tragedy and comedy, divine presence and divine absence, divine providence and human agency. Christina elucidates how Buechner holds these surprising and even scandalous tensions, thereby shocking us awake to the wonder of what it is to be human in the present age, with an eye toward the eschaton. She argues that Buechner sets before us a way to live well amidst the ambiguities, tensions, and paradoxes of the present age, amongst the communion of saints—unsaintly saints like Buechner’s Godric, Brendan, and Jacob not the least. Christina’s methodology reflects the interdisciplinary of her subject matter, involving literary analysis, archival research, phenomenology, and theology, and appealing to a rather eclectic group of interlocutors, including Shakespeare, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, James Muilenberg, Romano Guardini, Rowan Williams, and Judith Wolfe, among others. 

Other Interests
In addition to her PhD research, Christina currently serves as an editor for Transpositions, the journal of the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St Andrews. Through her studies, her work in ministry, and her formation at L’Abri, Christina has come to love hospitality, story, Scripture, liturgy, the arts, the history of ideas, cultural exegesis, gardening, trail running, functional fitness, jigsaw puzzles, cups of tea, and children’s books.  

Contact
[email protected]