School Notes: Yale Divinity School
September/October 2021

Professor looks back on stellar academic career

As he enters retirement after two decades at YDS and a half-century in the academy, John Collins, Holmes Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation, and colleagues are looking back on a career of exceptional depth and range. Collins has authored 26 scholarly books, edited another two dozen, and published an astonishing 336 academic articles. He also spent the past decade developing a popular seminar titled What are Biblical Values? that applied the professor’s vast expertise to engaging students on the most controversial issues of the day, from abortion to race to the environment. The course became the basis for a book of the same name, published by Yale University Press in 2019.

Gospel music scholar joins faculty

Braxton Shelley has joined the faculty as a tenured associate professor with appointments at YDS, the Institute of Sacred Music, and the music department of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He will serve as faculty director of a new interdisciplinary Program in Music and the Black Church, housed in the ISM. A musicologist who specializes in African American popular music, Professor Shelley focuses his research on gospel performance, digital culture, media studies, sound studies, phenomenology, homiletics, and theology.

Preparing for vocation amid a historic pandemic

The summers of 2020 and 2021 were arguably the worst two this century for college and graduate students seeking summer internships, especially if they had hoped to work in person. Yet dozens of YDS students, as well as the Divinity School’s Office of Vocation and Leadership, made the most of the adverse situation through resourcefulness and resilience. In 2020, when all in-person internship and clinical pastoral education (CPE) opportunities fell apart due to the pandemic, YDS was able to place 44 students in digital internships with nonprofits and churches. Even more were placed in 2021—55 students in all, with 22 in remote and hybrid internships and 33 in CPE placements.