About

Natalie Carnes is a constructive theologian invested in questions that cross the fields of aesthetics, feminism, and systematics. She finds her systematic questions are at the same time aesthetic ones, like: How does God come to us in our material existence? Or: How do we in our material lives honor or betray divine life? Similarly, her feminist concerns about idolatry, authority, and hermeneutics are preoccupations of systematic theology, even as these concerns are also explored and expressed in the aesthetic investments of feminist theology.

Among Professor Carnes’s scholarship are four books, including Beauty: A Theological Engagement with Gregory of Nyssa, Image and Presence: A Christological Reflection on Iconoclasm and Iconophilia, and Motherhood: A Confession. Her fourth and most recent book, Attunement: The Art and Politics of Feminist Theology reflects on the entanglement of aesthetics, politics, and theology to suggest a path forward by which feminist theology might transform Christian theological discourse. She also recently edited a special edition of Modern Theology on divine action and the transcendence of God. Her recent more popular pieces include an essay on beauty for Mockingbird and one on iconoclasm for Plough.

Professor Carnes’s current projects include a co-authored volume with Matthew Whelan on art and poverty. It asks how making, beholding, and supporting art can be justified in a world of need, and how extreme need conditions what art is and how it should circulate in the world. She is also in the midst of writing a book on creativity.

Professor Carnes is currently Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School.