Staff profile of Dr David Tollerton

Name:

Dr David Tollerton

Position:

Lecturer of Theology

Email:

d.tollerton@bangor.ac.uk

Location:

T21

Phone:

Background:

Growing up in Bristol, I was from my early teens fascinated by questions about God and religion. As a nineteen year-old arriving at Oxford Brookes University to study theology I therefore felt at home amidst debates over the tensions and ambiguities of faith, and spent a happy three years arguing, writing and reading. A recurring focus during my degree was on how religious traditions and the Bible are encountered in modernity, and this emphasis continued into my dissertations at both undergraduate and masters degree level. The latter was written during a one-year scholarship at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. In 2005 I returned to Bristol to begin a PhD on post-Holocaust readings of the Book of Job, and over the following few years became steadily more involved in teaching at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. After being awarded my doctorate I became involved with a project at the University of Plymouth focused on religion and freedom of expression in contemporary society, before arriving at Bangor in September 2010.

Modules Taught

The Bible in the Modern World
Theology and the Holocaust
God in Film
Religion and Freedom of Expression

Research Interests:

• Modern reception of the Bible
• Religious responses to the Holocaust
• The relationship between the sacred and the secular

Recent Publications:

Monograph

The Book of Job and Post-Holocaust Theology, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix (forthcoming).

Journal Articles

“Reading Job as Theological Disruption for a Post-Holocaust World,” Journal of Theological Interpretation, 3, 2 (2009).
“‘A New Collection of Holy Scriptures’? Assessing Three Ascriptions of the Sacred to Holocaust Testimony within Jewish Theology,” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History (2008).
“Emancipation from the Whirlwind: Piety and Rebellion among Jewish-American Post-Holocaust and Christian Liberation Readings of Job,” Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, 2, 2 (2007).
Chapters in Edited Books
“Midrashic Tradition and Innovation in Post-Holocaust Retellings of Job,” in Retelling the Bible: Literary, Historical and Social Contexts, edited by Lucie Doležalová and Tamás Visi, Bern: Peter Lang Verlag (forthcoming).
“Two Jewish-American Interpretations of the Book of Job in the Aftermath of the Holocaust: A Short Discussion of the Relationship between Job’s Reception and its Ancient Production,” in Text, Theology and Trowel: Recent Research in Biblical Studies, edited by Lidia D. Matassa and Jason M. Silverman, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock (forthcoming).