Bio
Jessica has lived in four countries on three continents, taught everything from piano to kindergarten literacy to continuing adult ESL, and even worked in the hospitality industry more than once. Between teaching and waitressing gigs, Jessica graduated from Westmont College in Santa Barbara (B.A., English), Regent College in Vancouver, Canada (M.A., Theological Studies), and the University of Notre Dame (Ph.D., English).
As an Associate Professor of English at George Fox University, Jessica teaches classes like “Faith and Story,” which asks how stories (and especially the Biblical story) might redeem the past and shape the future. She also teaches classes on British Literature since about 1800 like “The Victorian Novel,” and “PostColonial & Commonwealth Literature,” typically focusing on the role of religious thought and practice in shaping institutions and imaginations.
Jessica’s academic research focuses on the intersection of faith and popular culture, with publications on how the novel shapes understandings of Jesus in the Victorian period and on the influence of the Bible on nineteenth-century literature. Her first book Jesus in the Victorian Novel: Reimagining Christ looks at how the popular novel changed theology around Jesus in nineteenth-century Britain.
As a popular writer and speaker, Jessica is known for finding the grace and redemptive possibility lurking within challenging parts of the Bible. She finds great joy in helping people discover the significance that the Bible has for our everyday lives by using popular fiction to enliven our readings of scripture. Students and audiences appreciate her earnest, gracious authenticity as she helps groups construct new understandings together through their shared conversation.
Nerd that she is, Jessica can’t imagine anything more fun than spending a day romping through the twists and turns of a biblical text with friends or talking long into the night about a TV show or novel. And she genuinely believes that the incarnation and bodily resurrection of Jesus are the most important events in history. So she’s always up for a long conversation about what it means to follow Jesus.
When not being a book worm, answering emails, or brushing up on Greek and Hebrew, Jessica is a home-renovating, gardening, baking, camping, hiking, swimming, and traveling wife and mother. She’s a life-long Notre Dame football fan, loves Australian Cricket & Rugby, is learning to appreciate Christmas in the summer with her Aussie family, and is learning to love her new Oregon home.
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Bio
Jessica has lived in four countries on three continents, taught everything from piano to kindergarten literacy to continuing adult ESL, and even worked in the hospitality industry more than once. Between teaching and waitressing gigs, Jessica graduated from Westmont College in Santa Barbara (B.A., English), Regent College in Vancouver, Canada (M.A., Theological Studies), and the University of Notre Dame (Ph.D., English).
As an Associate Professor of English at George Fox University, Jessica teaches classes like “Faith and Story,” which asks how stories (and especially the Biblical story) might redeem the past and shape the future. She also teaches classes on British Literature since about 1800 like “The Victorian Novel,” and “PostColonial & Commonwealth Literature,” typically focusing on the role of religious thought and practice in shaping institutions and imaginations.
Jessica’s academic research focuses on the intersection of faith and popular culture, with publications on how the novel shapes understandings of Jesus in the Victorian period and on the influence of the Bible on nineteenth-century literature. Her first book Jesus in the Victorian Novel: Reimagining Christ looks at how the popular novel changed theology around Jesus in nineteenth-century Britain.
As a popular writer and speaker, Jessica is known for finding the grace and redemptive possibility lurking within challenging parts of the Bible. She finds great joy in helping people discover the significance that the Bible has for our everyday lives by using popular fiction to enliven our readings of scripture. Students and audiences appreciate her earnest, gracious authenticity as she helps groups construct new understandings together through their shared conversation.
Nerd that she is, Jessica can’t imagine anything more fun than spending a day romping through the twists and turns of a biblical text with friends or talking long into the night about a TV show or novel. And she genuinely believes that the incarnation and bodily resurrection of Jesus are the most important events in history. So she’s always up for a long conversation about what it means to follow Jesus.
When not being a book worm, answering emails, or brushing up on Greek and Hebrew, Jessica is a home-renovating, gardening, baking, camping, hiking, swimming, and traveling wife and mother. She’s a life-long Notre Dame football fan, loves Australian Cricket & Rugby, is learning to appreciate Christmas in the summer with her Aussie family, and is learning to love her new Oregon home.
Follow me @
Faculty Positions
2019 —
Associate Professor of English
Chair of Language & Literature 2023 —
Director of Liberal Arts 2019 — 2021
2017 — 2019
Head of English
Assistant Professor of English
2016 — 2017
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Education
Ph.D. — English
Dissertation
The Quest for a Novelistic Jesus:
Literary Relationships with Jesus in Victorian Realism
Supervisor: Sara L. Maurer
Committee: Mark A. Noll,
David Wayne Thomas, Chris R. Vanden Bossche
MA — English
Exam Areas
- Nineteenth-Century British Literature, with an emphasis on the novel
- British Church History & Historical Theology from the Reformation to 1900
- Religion and Literature
Languages
- Spanish
- French
MA — Theological Studies
Thesis
“At Peace and In Place”:
The Theology of Place in Wendell Berry’s Poetry
Thesis Advisor: Loren E. Wilkinson
Second Reader: Maxine Hancock
Languages
- Biblical Greek
- Biblical Hebrew
BA — English
Comprehensice Exams Emphasis
- American Literature
- The Novel