Background

Rosemary Kellison (Ph.D., 2013, Florida State University) is a comparative religious ethicist with special expertise in ethics of war, gender, and feminism. Her first book, Expanding Responsibility for the Just War: A Feminist Critique (Cambridge University Press, 2019), draws on feminist moral philosophy to interrogate central concepts of the Western–Christian just war tradition that have been used to significantly narrow responsibility for harm inflicted on noncombatants during war.

Kellison’s current research is focused in two areas. The first has to do with the moral implications of participation (whether active or participation) in war for individuals and communities. In particular, Kellison is interested in the concept of moral injury as a particular kind of harm suffered by servicemembers, veterans, and noncombatants, and what this concept implies regarding moral responsibility in war. Her second current project explores what a feminist approach to the study of religious ethics entails, along with the place of such an approach within the larger discipline of religious studies.

Publications 

• Expanding Responsibility for the Just War: A Feminist Critique. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 
• “Gender Discrimination.” The Encyclopedia of Religious Ethics, edited by William Schweiker, Maria Antonaccio, Elizabeth Bucar, and David A. Clairmont, 1359–65. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022. 
• “The Critical Power of an Expanded Concept of Moral Injury.” Journal of Religious Ethics 49.3 (2021): 442–61. 
•  Co-authored with Nahed Artoul Zehr. “Tradition-Based Approaches to the Study of the Ethics of War.” Routledge Handbook of Ethics and International Relations, edited by Eric Heinze and Brent Steele, 208–20. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018.
• “Seeing Power in Just War Reasoning.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 98.3 (2015): 398–427. 
•  “Impure Agency and the Just War: A Feminist Reading of Right Intention.” Journal of Religious Ethics 43.2 (2015): 317–41. 
•  “Tradition, Authority, and Immanent Critique in Comparative Ethics.” Journal of Religious Ethics 42.4 (2014): 713–41.

•  Co-authored with Shannon Dunn. “At the Intersection of Scripture and Law: Qur’an 4:34 and Violence against Women.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 26.2 (2010): 11–36.

Courses

FALL 2023

• REL3170: Religious Ethics & Moral Problems
• REL3505: The Christian Tradition

spring 2024

• REL3171: Topics in Ethics: Foundation of Human Rights (co-taught with Dr. John Kelsay)
• REL4491/RLG5497: Feminist Ethics