Alumni Profile: Dr. Mary McCampbell '94

"As a student at Covenant, I gained eyes to see the beauty of God's glorious creation more vividly, including the common grace insights found via the creativity of his image bearers. While discussing philosophical claims, reading novels, or watching and analyzing movies with professors, I began to understand the crucial connections between engaging the arts and spiritual formation." - Mary

Dr. Mary McCampbell '94 is an associate professor of humanities at Lee University where she regularly teaches courses on contemporary fiction, film, popular culture, and modernism. A native Tennessean, she completed her doctorate at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK); her research focused on the relationship between contemporary fiction, late capitalist culture, and the religious impulse. Her publications span the worlds of literature, film, and popular music, and this interdisciplinary focus is also present in her forthcoming book, Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy (Fortress Press: April, 2022). You can find her writing in many public-facing faith and culture publications such as Image Journal, The Other Journal, Relevant Magazine, Christ and Pop Culture, and The Curator. 

Mary was a Scholar-in-Residence at Regent Theological College, Vancouver, for the 2018 winter term, where she worked on a second forthcoming book, Postmodern Prophetic: The Religious Impulse in Contemporary Fiction. Her academic publications include chapters or articles on contemporary fiction and popular culture in Isn’t it Ironic?: Irony in Contemporary Popular Culture (Routledge), ASAP Journal, Spiritual Identities: Literature and the Post-Secular Imagination, Sacred and Immoral: On the Writings of Chuck Palahniuk, and The Modern Humanities Research Association’s Yearbook of English Studies.

She has been one of the organizers of Calvin College's Festival of Faith and Music since 2009, and she frequently speaks and teaches on the theological significance of popular music, film, and fiction. Mary was the Summer 2014 Writer-in-Residence at L’Abri Fellowship in Greatham, England and periodically lectures at English L’Abri.