Shannon M. McAlister, Ph.D.

Biography

Shannon McAlister is Associate Professor of Theology and Spirituality, and Director of Field Education. She holds a Ph.D. in Theology from The Catholic University of America, and is also a trained and practicing spiritual director. She taught at Fordham University in New York City for 13 years before joining the Franciscan School of Theology at the University of San Diego, and she currently serves as the President of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality.

Dr. McAlister’s research focuses on feminine-gendered language for God—and the portrayal of God as a woman and mother—within the works of the Fathers, saints, and Doctors of the Church in the Latin West. Her work with Latin texts overturns a widely held, scholarly narrative which mistakenly portrays feminine language for God as disappearing after the days of the early Church.

Her publications have shown that God was widely portrayed as a woman and mother all the way through the height of the Middle Ages—a tradition which was carried forward even into the nineteenth century in those places where the works of Augustine of Hippo, Gregory the Great, and Thomas Aquinas were read. Her 2018 article on “Christ as the Woman Seeking Her Lost Coin: Luke 15:8-10 and Divine Sophia in the Latin West” was the most-read article in Theological Studies two-and-a-half years after it was published; and her book on the history of a discussion in the Middle Ages about calling God the Father a “Mother” and God the Son a “Daughter” is under contract with Notre Dame Press.

Degrees

• Ph.D. Systematic Theology, School of Theology and Religious Studies, The Catholic University of America, May 12, 2012
• M.A. Historical and Systematic Theology, The Catholic University of America,  January 31, 2008