Christina Bieber Lake

Teaching, writing, and speaking are my vocational passions. I'm interested in contemporary American literature, Southern literature, African American literature, and literary theory. I'm a Flannery O'Connor scholar with a strong interest in Cormac McCarthy.  I've always believed we must learn to be good readers of fiction in order to enter our posthuman world ethically--and so I wrote a book about that.  I've just finished a book arguing that story (as it typically conceived in America) is inherently theological, and another one about how to remain inspired to teach. I love to travel to speak at conferences on a wide variety of topics, please book me at https://christinabieberlake.com

I live in Carol Stream with my husband, Steve, and our son, Donovan. We don't love Illinois winters or its politics, but we do love the Chicago Bears, Cubs, Blackhawks, and Bulls.

Emory University
Ph.D., English

Emory University
M.A., English

Princeton University
B.A., English

• American Literature
• African American Literature
• Southern Literature
• Biotechnology
• Posthumanism
• Literary Theory
• Teaching/Consulting/Coaching: christinabieberlake.com

• Modern Language Association (MLA)
• South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA)
• Conference on Christianity and Literature (CCL)
• Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity (CBHD)
• Association of Literary Scholars Critics and Writers (ALSCW)
• The Society for Literature Science and the Arts (SLSA)

The Next Big Science vs. Church Battle: Can Transhumanism and Christianity Co-Exist?
The Christian Post
Keynote speakers for the event included Donaldson; the Rev. Dr. Ron Cole-Turner of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary; Christina Bieber Lake, Ph.D. of Wheaton College; and Arizona State University Professor Joel Garreau...
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• ENGL 105 - Modern Global Literature
• ENGL 343 - American Literature: Modernism and Beyond
• ENGL 348 - Selected Authors: Toni Morrison
• ENGL 348 - Selected Authors: Flannery O'Connor/Walker Percy
• ENGL 349 - African American Literature
• ENGL 434 - Modern Literary Theory
• ENGL 494 - Senior Seminar

• Beyond the Story: American Literary Fiction and the Limits of Materialism
• The Flourishing Teacher: Vocational Renewal for a Sacred Profession
• Prophets of the Posthuman: American Fiction and the Ethics of Personhood
• The Incarnational Art of Flannery O'Connor

“Of Whales and Wart Hogs: Jonah as Biblical Paradigm for Teaching O’Connor” in Approaches to Teaching Flannery O’Connor, ed. Robert Donahoo and Marshall Bruce Gentry. Modern Language Association of America, 2019.

“The Failed Fictions of Transhumanism” in Christian Perspectives on Transhumanism and the Church: Chips in the Brain, Immortality, and the World of Tomorrow, ed. Steve Donaldson and Ron Cole-Turner. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

“Communion, not Consilience: Protecting the Future of Interdisciplinary Literary Study.” Philosophy and Literature 41.2 (2017): 290-303.

“’I Don’t Want to Play Anymore’ Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2, The Science Wars, and the Soul of Academe.” Renascence 69.4 (Fall 2017): 222-239.

“Future Flannery: Or, How a Hillbilly Thomist Can Help Us Navigate the Politics of Personhood in the Twenty-first Century” in A Political Companion to Flannery O’Connor, edited by Hank Edmonson. University of Kentucky Press, 2017: 303-326.

“A Vision and a Voice: Women Who Wrote the South.” Introduction, with Kibibi Mack-Shelton, to Volume II:  Ghosts and Memories:  White and Black Southern Women’s Lives and Writings. Foreword by Mark Bauerlein; ed. Christina Bieber Lake and Kibibi Mack-Shelton. History and Women, Culture and Faith: Selected Writings of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011: xvii-xxviii.

 “Four Things an Alien Civilization Would Learn About the West if All They Watched was HBO’s Westworld”

"The Hookup Culture Revisited: Katherine Heiny's Single, Carefree, Mellow"

“The Artifice of Eternity”: Don DeLillo’s Zero K.

“Children of a Lesser (but Incredibly Tech-Savvy) God,”

“The End of the End of the World: Margaret Atwood Completes a Dystopian Trilogy”

“The Smartest Zombie Novel You’ll Never Read”

 

Towards a Theology of Story

Are stories inherently theological? In this presentation Dr. Christina Bieber Lake, Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English, considers a famous short story by Ernest Hemingway in light of this question, drawing from the riches of the Christian philosophical tradition known as personalism.