Michael J. Murray

Michael Murray is an associate professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at Franklin and Marshall College. He earned his doctoral degree in 1991 at the University of Notre Dame. His areas of specialization and research interest lie in early modern philosophy (with a focus on Leibniz), metaphysics, and philosophy of religion. He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has published two books: Reason for the Hope Within (Eerdmans, 1999) and Philosophy of Religion: The Big Questions (Blackwell, 1999) with Eleonore Stump. His forthcoming, Leibniz's Philosophical Theology is an annotated translation of Leibniz's commentary on article 17 of Gilbert Burnet's "Commentary on the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England." In addition, Michael is a member of the executive committee of the Society of Christian Philosophers and the chair of the Bonchek Institute for Rational Thought and Inquiry at Franklin and Marshall. (More info at his F&M page.)

Kathy Bassard

Kathy Bassard is an associate professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University. With a Ph.D. from Rutgers, she has been on the faculty at Berkeley and received awards from the National Research Council and the Pew Foundation. Her publications include Spiritual Interrogations and articles in such journals as African American Review and Callaloo. She lives in Richmond with her husband and children.

Marc Baer

Marc Baer is a professor in the History Department at Hope College. He does research on the cultural, social, and political history of Britain (especially London) since the late eighteenth century. Baer's most recent publications include Theatre and Disorder in Late Georgian London (Oxford University Press, 1992) and "The Ruin of a Public Man," in Sheridan Studies (Cambridge University Press, 1995). He is presently working on a new book, The Workshop of Democracy, a cultural and political study of the London borough of Westminster between the French Revolution and World War I. Baer earned his Ph.D. at the University of Iowa in 1976. Besides his teaching and research Baer helped organize the Hope College Veritas Forum, and he directs the College's Pew Society, which helps equip students to consider and prepare for graduate school and university teaching careers. He serves on the executive committee and as the treasurer of the North American Conference on British Studies.