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Adam Kotsko

American writer and theologian (born 1980)

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Adam Kotsko (born 1980) is an American theologian, religious scholar, culture critic, and translator, working in the field of political theology. He served as an Assistant Professor of Humanities at Shimer College in Chicago, which was absorbed into North Central College in 2017. He writes about philosophers Slavoj Žižek and Giorgio Agamben, as well as American pop culture.

01Early life and education

Adam Kotsko was born on July 19, 1980, in Flint, Michigan, and grew up in nearby Davison.

Kotsko earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois, in 2002. From there, he went on to the Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS), where he completed a Master of Arts degree in religious studies in 2005, with a thesis in the form of a translation and commentary on Jacques Derrida's essay "Literature in Secret: An Impossible Filiation".

Kotsko completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in theology, ethics, and culture at CTS in 2009. His doctoral dissertation was titled Atonement and Ontology. A modified version of his dissertation was published by Continuum International Publishing Group in 2010 under the title of The Politics of Redemption: The Social Logic of Salvation.

Kotsko at the Shimer College commencement ceremony in Chicago in May 2012
Kotsko at the Shimer College commencement ceremony in Chicago in May 2012

02Career

After completing his doctorate in 2009, Kotsko taught for two years at Kalamazoo College, a liberal arts college in Michigan. In 2011, Kotsko was hired by Shimer College, a small great-books college in Chicago.

Kotsko has written on the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, including a 2008 book titled Žižek and Theology and a 2012 article in the Los Angeles Review of Books. His other works include The Politics of Redemption: The Social Logic of Salvation and a translation of Giorgio Agamben's The Sacrament of Language: An Archaeology of the Oath.

Watch videos about Adam KotskoExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Adam Kotsko, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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