Maddie Shorman
Phd Student, the university of texas at austin
Maddie Shorman is a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin in the LBJ School for Public Affairs. Her juxtaposition between religion, race, and politics punctuates her research and writing. Maddie believes that education is one of the most transformative ways to engage with the world and seeks to impact academia through her dedication to empathetic teaching and critical research.
Teaching
Maddie began her Master’s tenure as a teaching assistant for the gateway undergraduate course at the Boren College of International Studies at the University of Oklahoma; she was then appointed head teaching assistant for the undergraduates at OU within the College of International Studies. At her current institution, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, Maddie is a teaching assistant at the graduate level for the qualitative research methods course for first-year doctoral students.
During her initial semester as a teaching assistant, Maddie realized that her career goal was to invest in the thoughtful development of students during their formative years in college. Her passion is teaching students to engage critically and empathetically with the world around them. She profoundly believes in the value of the academy and the kind of problem-solving skills that it can instill through sustained investment in students' futures.
CURRENT PROJECT
Maddie is creating an index of Christian dispositions toward violence throughout history, highlighting the theological luminaries and their contextual, socio-political locations. This project aims to utilize Gadamer’s reception history and a reversal of the hermeneutical spiral in new fields—international studies—to inform when and how religious communities develop traditions relating to war and violence and, importantly, when those textual traditions of seemingly similar communities diverge at the point of stances on violence.
At its core, this project frames a deeply sociological question: How does proximity to power influence views of violence? The implications of understanding this development are vast in both the religious and political arena.