Religious Ethics, Aesthetics, Practical Theology, Kierkegaard
Professor Jothen teaches classes in Bible, Christian Theology, Existentialism, and Ethics. Current and past courses include Religion, Beauty, and the Arts; Christian Ethics: Life and Death; The Bible and Ecological Desire, and Christian Theology and Human Experience. He's led several study away/abroad classes as well, including Living Faith: Theology and Practice at Holden Village and Global Semester: The Ethics of Travel. He's also taught in the Great Conversation/Enduring Questions Conversation program. His research revolves around questions of moral formation and practice, especially in relation to culture and aesthetics. His first book, Kierkegaard, Selfhood, and Art: Aesthetics and Christian Becoming, was published by Routledge Press in 2014. He is married to Kaethe Schwehn, a writer who teaches in the English Department at St. Olaf, and has two delightful children, Thisbe and Matteus.