Criteria and Committee

Updated November 5, 2024

Rationale

The rubric criteria support the mission of the Swedenborg Foundation by evaluating how publications may “foster affirmative, informed, and increasingly broad engagement with the theological message disclosed by Emanuel Swedenborg.” The characteristics particularly emphasized in the rubric are publications that contribute to informed as well as broad engagement.

Rubric Criteria

Potential publications are assessed using the following criteria. Each of the eight elements (grouped into four categories) are scored on a scale of 0-3. Each numerical score is accompanied by a qualitative explanation of the assessment.

• Engagement with Swedenborg
  • Quality of engagement
  • Quantity of direct engagement
• Ability to increase awareness of or engagement with Swedenborg
  • Potential impact
  • Size of potential readership
• Importance of the Contribution
  • Relevance to modern issues and/or scholarly discourse
  • Contribution to new thought and understanding
• Caliber and potential contribution of the text
  • Quality of writing and research
  • Author credibility and nature of influence

Scoring:
3=Excellent
2=Good
1=Adequate but needs strengthening
0=Poor/inadequate

Dr. Rebecca K. Esterson is the Dean and Dorothea Harvey Professor of Swedenborgian Studies at the Center for Swedenborgian Studies. She teaches in the Department of Sacred Texts and Their Interpretation at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Her areas of teaching and research interests include: Swedenborgian thought and theology, the history of biblical interpretation, hermeneutics, Jewish-Christian relations, eighteenth century intellectual culture, Christian Hebraism, and comparative religious studies. Her book Jewish Allegory in Eighteenth-Century Christian Imagination was published by the Society of Biblical Literature Press in 2023, and she is co-authoring a religious biography of Helen Keller for Eerdmans Publishing.

Dr. Kristin King studied at Cambridge University and holds a second masters and a PhD from Boston University. She is a professor emerita and former president of Bryn Athyn College, where she taught English, Writing, and Communications. She continues to do freelance editing and annotation and serve on nonprofit boards. She has published on 19th and 20th century American writers, women’s narratives, new ways to read Swedenborg, historic views of gardening and correspondences, and most recently, articles on the role of nature in a post pandemic world, the expanding importance of digital and other literacies, and the interface of spirit and matter in old houses. She is currently working on a collection of essays drawing upon Shakespeare, Milton, Robert Frost, Helen Keller, and Swedenborg.

Dr. Jason Lunden is a neuroscientist and freelance medical writer with over five years of experience in medical writing, and fifteen years at the laboratory bench. He specializes in copyediting, pharmaceutical advisory boards, regulatory, and clinical documents. Dr. Lunden holds a PhD in Cell Biology from the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, where his research focused on the role of serotonin in stress-induced opioid relapse. As a postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers University and the Hussman institute for autism, he examined the interaction between norepinephrine and stress in autism, as well as modeling GABA and glutamate interactions in neuronal stem cell models derived from white blood cells of children with autism. With fifteen years of experience in biomedical research, he is passionate about scientific communication, striving to make complex scientific concepts accessible to the general public.

Dr. Lunden discovered the writings of Swedenborg in 2022, and formed an immediate connection. After binge-reading Heaven and Hell, Conjugial Love, and several other works in just two months, his engagement with Swedenborg’s theological vision deepened significantly. As a member of the editorial committee, Dr. Lunden brings his scientific rigor and dedication to accessible communication, aiming to broaden the reach of Swedenborg’s profound ideas, making them accessible to a wider audience.

Dr. Vincent Roy-Di Piazza is a historian of science, religion, and political economy. He obtained his doctorate in history of science, medicine, economic and social history from the University of Oxford in 2022, with a thesis on Swedenborg and the soul-body problem. He has worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford, Stockholm, and Jyväskylä, and held various research fellowships in the USA, Italy, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

Vincent has published and lectured about various aspects of Swedenborg’s life and thought, and has a broader interest in currents related to his ideas and posterity.

Dr. Michael P. Russo is an independent scholar and philosopher.  He has a doctorate in philosophy with concentration on Aristotle and has conducted years of further research in philosophy, science, and religion of early modern Europe and Buddhism. He taught philosophy for twenty years and has contributed explanatory annotations to the New Century Edition series of Swedenborg’s theological works. He is presently writing a book on Swedenborg’s thought and related subjects.

Dr. Lewis Shaw is a retired Episcopalian minister and scholar with a PhD in the history of ideas from Cambridge University, where he explored diverse currents of thought, including the work of Emanuel Swedenborg. Dr. Shaw has served on the board of the Swedenborg Foundation, where he contributed to the Foundation’s scholarly publishing projects. His academic expertise is complemented by a deep interest in interreligious dialogue, with a particular focus on Buddhism as a conversation partner for spiritual exploration.

Dr. Devin P. Zuber is the Associate Professor of American Studies, Religion, and Literature and the George F. Dole Professor of Swedenborgian Studies at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley. He currently serves as the Chair of the Department for Historical and Cultural Studies of Religion. His academic work focuses on the intersection of religion and literature, with a particular emphasis on the nineteenth-century reception of Emanuel Swedenborg’s thought. Dr. Zuber also contributes to the PhD program’s concentrations in Art & Religion, New Religious Movements, and Religion & Literature. Prior to joining GTU in 2011, he taught at various universities in Germany and New York. His research has earned him fellowships at institutions including the British Library’s Eccles Centre for American Studies and the Rachel Carson Center for the Environment in Munich.