Иподиа́кон Павел Сиверс

As Associate Professor of English at Bucknell University I study and teach about Christian literature and symbolism, the history of nature, ecosemiotics and ecopoetics, ecocriticism, American cultural identity, early literature, the writings of John Scottus Eriugena and S.L. Frank, public rhetoric related to issues of secularism and faith, and modern literary resistance to totalitarianism. My recent work has included serving as William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in Religion and Public Life at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, 2018-2019. I am an ordained Subdeacon in the Russian Orthodox Christian Church Outside of Russia and am Warden of a local mission parish that serves the Bucknell Orthodox Christian community, for which I am faculty adviser, holding a diploma in Pastoral Theology alongside my academic degrees.

Education and Research

Ph.D., English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

M.A., English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

M.A., Early British Studies, University of Wales at Aberystwyth

M.S.J., Journalism, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University

B.A., History, Brown University

Diploma in Pastoral Theology, St. John of Kronstadt Pastoral School

William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in Religion and Public Life, James Madison Program, Princeton University

Visiting Researcher, Early Irish Department, University College Cork

Co-Editor, Stories of the Susquehanna Valley book series and digital projects, 2010- Present.

Selected Publications

“Eriugena’s Irish Backgrounds.” In the Brill Companion to Eriugena, ed, Stephen Lahey and Adrian Guiu. Brill, 2019.

Co-Editor, The Totalitarian Legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution. Lexington Books, 2019.

Co-Producer, “Stories of the Susquehanna Valley” student documentary series: Stories of the Susquehanna: Utopian Dreams aired on public TV station WVIA in spring 2016. The Coopers and Conservation at the Susquehanna Headwaters in November 2018.Churches of Coal Country, in production.

“A Geography of the Imagination: James Fenimore and Susan Fenimore Cooper’s Regional Legacy.” In The James Fenimore Cooper Society Journal 28 (2017): 39-44.

Co-Editor, Glory and Honor: Orthodox Christian Resources on Marriage.
St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2016.

Editor, Re-Imagining Nature: Environmental Humanities and Ecosemiotics. Bucknell Press, 2014.

“Eriugena, the Irish Otherworld, and Early Medieval Nature.” In Eriugena and Creation, ed. W. Otten and M. Allen. Brepols, 2014.

“The Green Otherworlds of Early Medieval Literature.” Chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Environmental Literature, ed. Louise Westling. Cambridge, 2013.

“Orthodoxy and Ecopoetics: The Green World in the Desert Sea.” In Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation, ed. John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz. Fordham University Press, 2013.

“Cooper, Coleridge, and Re-Imagining a Native Cosmology,” in James Fenimore Cooper: His Country and His Art, no. 18. Ed. Steven Harthorn and Hugh MacDougall. SUNY Oneonta, 2013. 114-120.

“The Early Irish Sublime as Reflection of Sophia,” in Beauty and the Beautiful in Eastern Christian Culture, ed. Natalia Ermolaev, Theotokos Press  2012. 212-224.

“Desert Islands: Europe’s Atlantic Archipelago as Ascetic Landscape.” In Studies in the Medieval Atlantic, ed. Benjamin Hudson. Palgrave Macmillan’s New Middle Ages series, 2012. 35-64.

“Ecopoetics and the Origins of English Literature.” In Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Stephanie LeMenager, Teresa Shewry and Ken Hiltner. Routledge, 2011. 105-130.

“Pre-Modern Ecosemiotics: The Green World As Literary Ecology.” In The Space of Culture-The Place of Nature in Estonia and Beyond, ed. Tiina Peil. University of Tartu Press, 2011.

Strange Beauty: Ecocritical Approaches to Early Medieval Landscape (Palgrave, 2009)

“Cooper’s Green World: Adapting Ecosemiotics to the Mythic Eastern Woodlands.” In James Fenimore Cooper, His Country and His Art, ed. Hugh MacDougall (Oneonta and Cooperstown, NY: SUNY Oneonta and Cooper Society, 2009).

“Environmentalist Readings of Tolkien.” In The Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment, ed. Michael D.C. Drout. New York and London: Routledge, 2006. 166-67.

“Landscapes of Conversion: Guthlac’s Mound and Grendel’s Mere as Expressions of Anglo-Saxon Nation-building.” Viator 34 (2003): 1-39. Revised and reprinted in The Postmodern Beowulf: A Critical Casebook, ed. Eileen A. Joy, Mary K. Ramsey, and Bruce D. Gilchrist. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2006.

Co-Editor, Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages (Palgrave, 2005)

Selected Recent Public Writing

“How The Man in the High Castle Actually Reveals America’s Totalitarian Trends,” The Federalist, Dec. 5 2019

“What Christians Face in a Neo-Marxist World,” The American Conservative, April 28, 2019

“The Orwellian Dangers of the ‘Equality Act.'” Public Discourse, April 24, 2019

“How Christian Science Became a Dying Religion.” The Federalist, April 11, 2019

“Why does the Left Suspend their Principles for Christian Minorities?” The Federalist, Jan. 22, 2019

“The Boy Scouts’ Bankruptcy is not just Financial. It’s Moral.” The Federalist, Jan. 2, 2019

“Remembering the Jonestown Massacre.” Public Discourse, Nov. 18, 2018

“Communists Brutally Murdered Russia’s Last Royal Family 100 Years Ago Today.” The Federalist, July 17, 2018

“What I Learned about American Culture by Binging on Gunsmoke and House of Cards.” The Federalist, June 22, 2017

“Political Diversity Among the Faculty.” The Counterweight, April 23, 2015

Other Work

Ordained Subdeacon and Warden, St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco Russian Orthodox Mission Church, Lewisburg PA, 2015 to the present.

Co-Director, Bucknell Project for American Leadership and Citizenship. 2016- Present.

Department Chair and Director of Literary Studies, Bucknell University, Lewisburg PA, 2015-2018

Steering Committee Member, Environmental Studies Department, Bucknell University, 2014- Present.

Founding Co-Convener, Bucknell Faculty Staff Christian Association, 2014.

Founder and First Coordinator, Environmental Humanities Initiative (now the Place Studies Program), Bucknell Center for Sustainability and the Environment, 2008-2010.

Urban Affairs Writer, Chicago Sun-Times, 1989-1992. Received three Peter Lisagor Awards for Exemplary Journalism (two for individual work, one as part of team coverage) while a staff writer at the Sun-Times, among other journalism awards.

National Correspondent, The Christian Science Monitor, 1988.