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Emily J. Dumler-Winckler, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and Religious Ethics
Theological Studies

Director of CREST research center

Courses Taught

Law, Religion, and Politics Seminar; Ignite Seminars (Religion, Politics, and Social Change: Transformative Texts; Religion and Politics: Beyond the Culture Wars); Incarnation and Incarceration; Christian Ethics: Gender and Sexuality; Political Theology; Theology, Race, and Gender: Great Books; Methods in Historical Theology; Survey of Modern Christianity; Theological Foundations.

Education

  • Ph.D. in Religion and Society, Princeton Theological Seminar, 2015
  • Th.M. in Moral Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary, 2009
  • M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary, 2007
  • B.A. in Religion and International Studies, University of Washington, 2001

Research Interests

  • Religion, Theology, Ethics, Politics
  • Religion and Modern Socio-political Movements
  • Dissent and Resistance as modes of Justice and Love
  • Political Theology
  • Virtue and Feminist Ethics
  • Social Theory (Gender, Sexuality and Race)
  • Science and Theology

Labs and Facilities

The CREST research center

Publications and Media Placements

Books

Modern Virtue: Mary Wollstonecraft and a Tradition of Dissent

In Progress: Abolition Christianities: the Imitation of Christ in Radical Antebellum Politics (under contract with Cambridge University Press).

Select journal articles and chapters in edited volumes

2026:    “Trans-Atlantic Unitarianism and Abolitionism: Dissent, Transcendentalism, and Beyond” to the Journal of the UU Studies Network. 

2026:    “‘The Laboring Classes’ Then and Now: Orestes Brownson and Ralph Waldo Emerson on Abolition and Labor” in Radical Transcendentalisms, ed. Alex Moskowitz and Ted Stolze.

2024: “Martin Luther King Jr.’s Nonviolent War for the Soul of America: Radical Love as Revolutionary Imitation of Christ” (working title) in Exemplars, Imitation, and Spiritual Formation: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry, ed. Eric Yang. 

 

2024: “Reproductive Justice: Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘Rights Against Domination’ for the ‘Cause of Virtue’” Political Theology.

 

2024: “Abolition and Anarchy, Then and Now: Political Theologies of Resistance, Government, and Non-Reformist Reforms” Journal for the Society of Christian Ethics, vol. 43, no. 2, fall 2023/winter 2024, 267-288.

 

2024: “Moral Exemplarity: The Trouble with Linda Zagzebski’s Semantic Theory of Exemplarity” Journal of Religious Ethics.


2021: “Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Anthropology: From Foil to Fertile Soil for Eco-Justice?” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, special issue: “Ambiguous Legacies, Contested Futures: Re-Assessing Cornerstone Figures in the American Environmental Tradition.” 

2019: “Protestant Political Theology and Pluralism: From a Politics of Refusal to Tending and Organizing for Common Goods” in Religions vol. 10. Sept 10, 1-18. 

2018: “Distinguishing Intellectual and Moral Virtues in Scientific Practice” Philosophy, Theology, and the Sciences vol. 5.1, 80-103.

2018: “Personal Responsibility in the Face of Structural Evil: Transcendentalist Debates Reconsidered” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, vol. 38.1, Spring/Summer. 

2017: “The Virtue of Emerson’s Imitation of Christ: Reflections from William Ellery Channing to John Brown” Journal of Religious Ethics vol. 45.3, 510-538. 

2015: “Putting on Virtue Without Putting Off Feminists: Mary Wollstonecraft’s Religious Moral  Imagination” Journal of Religious Ethics vol. 43.2, 342-367. 

2019: “New Directions in Protestant Social Ethics” in T&T Clark Companion to Political Theology, ed. Ruben Rosario-Rodriguez, 433-448.

2019: “Theology and Religion" in The Wollstonecraftian Mind. in The Routledge Philosophical Minds series. eds. Sandrine Bergès, Eileen Hunt Botting, and Alan Coffee, 297-310

Honors and Awards

  • Grant through Notre Dame’s Tech Ethics Center “From Bioethics to AI Ethics and Back Again” (co-PI with Jeff Bishop and Jason Eberl, 2025). 
  • Collaborative Inquiries in Theological Anthropology, Project funded by John Templeton Foundation. Project title: "Virtue, Habituation, and Exemplarity." (2020-2023)
  • Donald G. Brennan Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching, College of Arts and Sciences, SLU. (2020)
  • University of Notre Dame; Center for Theology, Science, and Human Flourishing, Theology post-doctoral research fellowship, funded by Templeton Religion Trust (2016-2018)

Professional Organizations and Associations

American Academy of Religion, Society of Christian Ethics, Fellowship for Protestant Ethics