2026 Colloquium: Calvin and Creation
19 March-21 March
Beeson Divinity School and Birmingham Theological Seminary
Colloquium Details:
Accommodations:
Courtyard by Marriott Birmingham Homewood ($149 per night)
Book directly using the Calvin Studies Society rate
*Colloquium rooms are held until March 6, 2026.
Transportation:
More details to follow.
Call for Graduate Papers:
The Calvin Studies Society invites current and recent doctoral students to submit paper abstracts for a graduate student panel to be held at the next Calvin Studies Colloquium, March 19-21 2026 hosted by Beeson Divinity School and Birmingham Theological Seminary in Birmingham, AL.
Schedule
Thursday and Friday: Hosted by Birmingham Theological Seminary at Covenant Presbyterian Church
Saturday: Hosted by Beeson Divinity School
Thursday, 19 March 2026 [BTS at Covenant Presbyterian Church]
10:00-11:00 AM: Calvin Studies Society Board Meeting
11:00 AM-1:00 PM: Arrivals and Registration
1:00-1:30 PM: Welcome
1:30-2:45 PM: Dr. Angela Carpenter
2:45-3:15: Coffee Break
3:15-4:30: Dr. Brad Gregory
Dinner
Friday, 20 March 2026 [BTS at Covenant Presbyterian Church]
9:30-10:45 AM: Short Paper Panels
10:45-11:15 AM: Coffee Break
11:15 AM-12:30 PM: Dr. Steven Tyra
12:30-1:45 PM: Lunch
1:45-3:00: Dr. Andrea Mostermann
3:00-3:30: Coffee Break
3:15-4:00: CSS Business Meeting
4:00-5:30: Free Time [Event at Samford/Beeson?]
5:30-7:00: Colloquium Banquet
Saturday, 21 March 2026 [Beeson Divinity School]
8:30-9:45 AM: Beeson Welcome and Graduate Student Panel
9:45-10:00 AM: Coffee Break
10:00-11:15 AM: Dr. Jon Balserak
11:15-11:30 AM: Closing
Presenters
Andrea Mosterman
Andrea Mosterman is the Joseph Tregle Professor in Early American History at the University of New Orleans. She studies slavery and the slave trade in early America and the Dutch Atlantic world. Her work has been published in, among others, Early American Studies and the Journal of African History. Her book Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York (Cornell University Press, October 2021) has won the 2020 Hendricks Award for best book-length manuscript relating to New Netherland and the Dutch colonial experience. She currently researches the voyage of the Dutch slave ship the Gideon and the seventeenth-century Dutch Atlantic slave trade with North America.
Her tentative presentation title: “Race, Slavery, and the Creation of Dutch Reformed Spaces of Worship in Early New York”
Angela Carpenter
Angela Carpenter is the Leonard and Marjorie Maas Associate Professor of Reformed Theology at Hope College. As a teacher and scholar of Reformed theology and ethics her work explores the implications of the doctrine of grace for Christian understandings of ethics, moral agency, and human society. Her second book, Grace and Social Ethics: Gift as the Foundation of Our Lives Together, was published by Baker Academic in 2024.
Her tentative presentation title: "'Earthly Benefits': Calvin on the Use and Enjoyment of Created Goods"
Brad S. Gregory
Brad S. Gregory is Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. A former Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows, he is the author of The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (2012), which has been translated into five languages, and is a member of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters.
His tentative presentation title: "The Early Modern European Roots of the Anthropocene"
Steven W. Tyra
Steven W. Tyra holds a Th.M. in Historical Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in History of Christianity from Baylor University. He completed his dissertation on John Calvin’s eschatology under David M. Whitford. A revised version was published as Neither the Spirit without the Flesh: John Calvin’s Doctrine of the Beatific Vision (Bloomsbury, 2024). A follow-up work entitled After Life: A History of the Soul’s Journey in Western Christianity is also under contract with Bloomsbury and is projected for late 2026. Originally from Northern California, he now lives in Central Texas with his wife and daughter.
His tentative presentation title: “A Purgatory for Protestants: Reading Calvin’s Eschatology as Anthropology in a Disembodied Age”
Jon Balserak
Jon Balserak is Senior Research Fellow at University of Bristol and Visiting Lecturer at University of Illinois Chicago. His most recent book is Geneva's Use of Lies, Deceit, and Subterfuge, 1536-1563: Telling the Old, Old Story in Reformation France (OUP, 2024). The second edition of his Calvinism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP) will appear in June 2026.
His tentative presentation title: "How do you Solve a Problem like Barbarity? Examining Calvin and Early Jesuits on Accommodatio."