Celebrating the Diverse Scholarly Work of Professors

Summer is often a time when Trinity faculty pursue scholarly work. That work was celebrated at a recent reception honoring the 2012 summer research grant recipients.

The research grant program is a competitive program for faculty-initiated summer professional development. It emphasizes shorter times of intensive, collaborative work, especially between disciplines.

Drs. Bill Boerman-Cornell, Mark Jones, Aaron Kuecker, Mark Peters, Keith Starkenburg, and Yudha Thianto shared highlights from their diverse projects.

Dr. Bill Boerman-Cornell, associate professor of education

As part of this ongoing project, Boerman-Cornell analyzed several graphic novels, selecting a corpus of novels with a variety of subjects, age levels, and subjective evaluations of quality. From that group, he developed a coding system based on the work of Scott McCloud, an American cartoonist and theorist.

Dr. Mark Jones, professor of English

Jones studied Sir Walter Scott’s Kenilworth and worked through the critical history of the novel. His research brought into focus three related topics that fall under the larger category of “Elements of Carnival in Scott’s Kenilworth,” the title of the article Jones is in the process of writing. 

Dr. Aaron Kuecker, associate professor of theology

Two writing projects were the focus of Kuecker’s work and are intended as chapters for an edited volume. The first chapter is a methodological overview of the current state of research into the concept of ethnicity in the New Testament. The second chapter is a comparative analysis of a cluster of identity-related phenomena in Luke-Acts and Vergil’s Aeneid.

Dr. Mark Peters, professor of music

Peters focused his summer research on Feast of Visitation cantatas by Christoph Graupner (1683-1760), Hofkapellmeister in Hesse-Darmstadt. None of Graupner’s Visitation cantatas has been published in a modern edition; Peters transcribed nearly five cantatas into modern editions using Finale music notation software. He also reviewed Tonus Peregrinus: The History of a Psalm-Tone and Its Use in Polyphonic Music, by Mattias Lundberg (published in Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 69 [2012]).

Dr. Keith Starkenburg, associate professor of theology

His research addressed the theology of Karl Barth, an important Swiss Reformed theologian in the twentieth century. The first part of the research argued that Barth’s theology relates the work of the Holy Spirit to the work of Jesus Christ without reducing their mutual agencies to one another. The second part showed that Barth’s doctrine of glory plays a significant role in how Barth accounts for the persuasive power of the Triune God’s activity within the Christian community.

Dr. Yudha Thianto, professor of theology

Thianto’s research focus is the study of the history of Bible translation into Malay at the time of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, in particular the earliest translation of the four Gospels and Acts, published in 1677.