For Immediate Release - May 11, 2018
The Graduate Theological Union is pleased to announce that Dr. Jean-François Racine, associate professor of New Testament at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University (JST-SCU), is the recipient of the 2018 GTU Excellence in Teaching Award. The GTU Excellence in Teaching Award recognizes a member of the GTU’s core doctoral faculty who is an exemplary embodiment of interreligious sensitivity and commitment, interdisciplinary approach to religious studies, and creative and effective classroom pedagogical methods and performance. Dr. Racine’s receipt of the award was announced at the GTU’s Commencement Exercises on May 10, 2018.
Dr. Racine has served on the faculty at the GTU and JST-SCU since 2002, and currently chairs the GTU’s department of Sacred Texts and Their Interpretation. His primary research and teaching emphases include biblical hermeneutics, New Testament textual criticism, and the narrative critical study of the gospels. Although he has been teaching courses on New Testament literature for nearly two decades, he notes that they are never the same courses, because the work of biblical interpretation and theology is ongoing: “In every era, new theological question emerge which need new theological answers,” he says. “This has been the case from the very beginning.” Rather than simply learning to rehearse old answers, Racine contends that we need religious scholars with the “capacity to theologically reflect on our world.”
The GTU Excellence in Teaching Award, formerly the Sarlo Excellence in Teaching Award, was instituted in 2003, and was funded until 2016 through the annual generosity of the Sarlo Family Foundation. Previous winners include Barbara Green, OP (2016), William O’Neill, SJ (2014), and Mia Mochizuki (2013).
Congratulations, Dr. Jean-François Racine, winner of the 2018 GTU Excellence in Teaching Award!