Department of Theology and Religious Studies

If you wish to get in touch with our administrative staff, please see the admin staff contact page.

Contact

Biography

Erik Eklund is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham and Graduate Fellow with the Northwestern University Research Initiative for the Study of Russian Philosophy and Religious Thought (NU RPRT Research Initiative). His doctoral thesis, A Triptych of Bottomless Light: Repetition, Originality and Transcendence in Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, charts the theological contours of the dialectic of repetition and identity in Nabokov's 1962 masterpiece. His earlier work on eschatology and theurgy in Nabokov's Lolita (1955), in conversation with the thought of Nicolas Berdyaev, earned him the inaugural Dieter E. Zimmer Prize for Best Postgraduate Work from the International Vladimir Nabokov Society. He holds a dual appointment in the Department of English and College of Ministry at Northwest University, and his peer-reviewed articles appear in Journal of Inklings Studies, Literature and Theology, Nabokov Online Journal, Nabokov Studies, The Nabokovian, Partial Answers (forthcoming), Religion and the Arts (forthcoming) and Religion & Literature (forthcoming).

Teaching Summary

Teaching Affiliate, University of Nottingham

THEO1009 Building the Christian Church

College of Ministry and Department of English, Northwest University

BIBL1103 Old Testament History and Literature BIBL1203 New Testament History and Literature BIBL2213 Jesus and the Synoptic Gospels BIBL3253 Corinthian Correspondence ENGL 1013 Composition I: Expository Writing THEO1213 Christian Thought THEO 3213 Systematic Theology I THEO 3223 Systematic Theology II UCOR 1053 Life Calling

From 2015-17, I taught Bible and theology at Cascade Christian High School (Puyallup, Washington), with honours courses on Augustine's Confessions and the Gospel of Matthew for concurrent college credit through Northwest University, as well as more general courses on philosophy, theology and spiritual formation.

Research Summary

I am interested in the strange things that occur when theology and fiction interfere with each other, particularly when the lines between these two seemingly disparate discourses begin to blur, as in… read more

Recent Publications

  • ERIK EKLUND, 2024. The Mirror and the Icon: An Alternative Reading of Nabokov’s Pale Fire Partial Answers. (In Press.)
  • ERIK EKLUND, 2024. Crystal to Crystal. In: JOHN MILBANK, RYAN HAECKER and JONATHAN LYONHART, eds., New Trinitarian Ontologies: Conference Proceedings of the New Trinitarian Ontologies Conference and Symposium Wipf & Stock. (In Press.)
  • ERIK EKLUND (ORGANISER AND PARTICIPANT), CHRISTOPHER A. LINK, MARY ROSS, MATTHEW ROTH and MICHAEL WOOD, 2023. Nabokov and Religion Round-table Nabokov Online Journal. (In Press.)
  • ERIK EKLUND, 2023. Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Moral Acts by Dana Dragunoiu (Review) Nabokov Studies. (In Press.)

Awards and Certifications

2022 | Certificate in Inclusive Pedagogy: Universal Design for Learning in Theological Education Sponsored by the American Academy of Religion (AAR) Committee on the Status of People with Disabilities in the Profession.

2019 | Dieter E. Zimmer Prize for Best Postgraduate Work on Nabokov $1,500USD. Administered, selected and awarded by the International Vladimir Nabokov Society, and funded by the Vladimir Nabokov Literary Foundation. For the essay, '"A Green Lane in Paradise": Eschatology and Theurgy in Humbert Humbert's Lolita'. (A revised version of this essay has been published in Nabokov Studies.)

2019 | Northwest University Online Instructor Certification Awarded upon review of three online modules, measured against seven criterion indicating 'proven expertise as an outstanding online instructor'.

Invited Seminars, Presentations & Conference Activity

(Upcoming) '"something else, something else, something else"; or, Nature Beyond the Natural Sense: Nabokov's (Eco-)Theo-Semiotics.' Sixth International Vladimir Nabokov Conference. Univeristy of Lausanne, 27-30 June 2023.

(Upcoming) '"It is as clear as the fact that it is raining": Nabokov's Theological Failures' Inaugural Conference of the Northwestern University Research Initiative for the Study of Russian Philosophy and Religious Thought (NU RPRT Research Initiative). Northwestern University, 21-23 April, 2023.

"Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story": The Perverse Morality of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita' Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts & Ideas Lunch Lecture. University of Texas at Austin, February 16, 2023. Invitation by Prof Lorraine Pangle and Dr Erik Dempsey.

'Nabokov's Religious Curiosity Shop.' Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Conference. San Francisco, 5-8 January 2023.

'Reader, Author, Angel: The Eschatological Turn in Vladimir Nabokov's "The Vane Sisters".' International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture (ISRLC) Biennial Meeting. University of Chester, 15-18 September 2022.

'Ultralight Beam: Bend Sinister and the Cult of St Antony.' Hidden Nabokov. Wellesley College, 15-19 June 2022.

'"Look at this tangle of thorns": Lolita and the Reformed Criminal.' Catholicism and Monsters. Online, 8-9 April 2022. Invitation by Prof Anne M Carpenter.

'Redemption and Metafiction after Lolita.' Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts (ITIA) Research Seminar. University of St Andrews, 12 November 2021. Invitation by Dr George Corbett.

'"The Best and Most Successful Works of Literature": Nabokov and the New Testament.' The Bible in Art, Music and Literature Seminar. Centre for Reception History of the Bible, University of Oxford, 18 October 2021. Invitation by Dr Christine Joynes.

'Alexandria is on Fire: St Anthony the Great and the Gift of Hagiography to Modern Self-Conscious Fiction.' International Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance (PMR) Conference. Villanova University, 15-17 October 2021.

'The Flowing Charshaf: Lolita's Theological Women.' Response by Dr Alison Jack. Logia Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Conference. University of St Andrews, 27 May 2021.

'Ever-Moving Repose: Temporality, Motion and the Infinite Gaze of Sudarg's Triptych.' Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Conference. Online, 7-10 January 2021.

'Meditations on the Coincidence of Metafiction and Metaphysics in Nabokov's Stories.' Response by Dr Giles Waller. Noesis Seminar. University of Cambridge, 26 November 2020. Invited by Prof Catherine Pickstock.

'A Triptych of Bottomless Light: Repetition, Originality, and the Divine in Nabokov's Pale Fire.' New Trinitarian Ontologies Symposium. University of Cambridge, 6 March 2020.

'Where the Tall White Fountain Plays: Mirrors and the Construction of Otherworldly Meaning in Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire.' Centre for Russian, Soviet, Central and Eastern European Studies (CRSCEES) Postgraduate Research Seminar. University of St Andrews, 17 October 2019. Invited by Dr Margarita Vaysman.

'Transgressive Sacramentalism: Vladimir Nabokov and the Johannine Crucifixion.' Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology Postgraduate Study Day. Cambridge, 31 July 2019.

'Stallions of Lizard-like Lust: C. S. Lewis, Vladimir Nabokov, and Literature as Imaginative Praxis.' Society for the Study of Theology (SST) Graduate Conference. Birmingham, 13 July 2019.

Current Research

I am interested in the strange things that occur when theology and fiction interfere with each other, particularly when the lines between these two seemingly disparate discourses begin to blur, as in the Corpus Dionysiacum, where, when we listen to the competing voices of critical scholars like Hugo Koch and Josef Stiglmayr and theologians like Hans Urs von Balthasar, we find within the mystical significance of pseudonymous writing the enduring problem of Macbeth's witches, whose lies are the context of their truth. Indeed, in the Corpus Dionysiacum is found much of what I find most fascinating in theology and literature-antimimesis, metafiction, deception, mystical reading and writing practices, apophasis and deification.

A comparativist by temperament, much of my research focuses upon authors and texts which occupy the liminal space in-between theology and fiction as well as modernism and postmodernism. I am fascinated by authors who write beyond the borderlands of theologically significant fiction, and so much of my research focuses upon and is illuminated by insights gleaned from the likes of Vladimir Nabokov and Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, Salman Rushdie and Javier Marías, each of whom use various metaliterary techniques and devices to problematise or make strange notions of transcendence, the divine, the other and the self.

Researching under the supervision of Alison Milbank and Siggy Frank, my doctoral thesis examines the problems of repetition and identity and their relation to metafiction and metaphysics in Nabokov's Pale Fire (1962), with a view towards problematising Nabokov's professed indifference to the religious and the mystical. I argue that the novel's intimate preoccupation with (non-identical) doubling, which it effects in its myriad mirrors, translates the philosophical-theological discourse tacit to the Neoplatonic Christian image of a 'pale fire' into a metafictional meditation repetition, originality and transcendence, thereby mediating and negotiating between the literary critic's search for the author and the mystic's search for God.

With Yuri Leving (Professor in Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University), I am currently organising a round-table discussion on Nabokov and religion to be published in the forthcoming issue of Nabokov Online Journal. I am also serving on an International Vladimir Nabokov Society-sponsored working group for academic freedom and equity, diversity and inclusion. The goal of this working group is to devise a set of guidelines that will provide conference organizers with a set of tools for dealing with potential conflict arising during a conference.

Past Research

Before coming to Nottingham, I studied for the MLitt in Theology, Imagination and the Arts at the University of St Andrews. Under the supervision of Judith Wolfe, I wrote my dissertation on the various metaphors C.S. Lewis deploys to think about eschatology and the doctrine of theosis especially. The initial question for this project originated in the scene of the painter in Lewis' 1945 novel, The Great Divorce, which suggests that the ghost's act of painting is in some sense necessary to the vision of God. To explicate this, I examined the medieval origins of many of Lewis' favored tropes for thinking about theosis and concluded that Lewis' eschatological imagination is deeply indebted to the literary and metaphysical imagination of the medieval system Lewis elucidates in The Discarded Image, with particular indebtedness to the final terrace of Dante's Purgatorio and to The Celestial Hierarchies of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. (A revised version of this project has been published as 'Confessing our Secrets: Liturgical Theōsis in the Thought of C. S. Lewis' in the Journal of Inklings Studies.)

Prior to undertaking coursework at St Andrews, I completed an MA in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary in 2012.

Department of Theology and Religious Studies

University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

Contact details

Twitter