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Dr Lexi Eikelboom

Research Fellow
Religion and Theology

Areas of expertise: twentieth century theology, especially Erich Przywara and Hans Urs von Balthasar; twenty-first century constructive theologies; Continental philosophy, especially Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Giorgio Agamben; art and literary criticism; theology and the arts, especially poetry, dance, and visual art; Christian anthropology, especially in terms of  gender and the relationship between embodiment and culture

HDR Supervisor accreditation status: Provisional

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-1549-247X

Phone: +617 3623 7574

Email: lexi.eikelboom@acu.edu.au

Location: ACU Melbourne Campus

Lexi Eikelboom is a Research Fellow in Religion and Theology at the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry. She completed a doctorate in Theology (Modern Doctrine) at the University of Oxford in 2016, following a Master’s in Christian Ethics also from Oxford. Before coming to ACU, she taught theology and interdisciplinary humanities at the John Wesley Honors College, Indiana Wesleyan University.

Eikelboom investigates points of intersection between theological and artistic discourses in order to understand how categories of significance to the arts might expand and challenge Christian doctrine. Her first book, Rhythm: A Theological Category, brings analyses of rhythm in poetry into conversation with social theory and phenomenology in order to argue for rhythm’s theological significance as well as for a particular approach to the study of rhythm in theology. Her current research investigates the intersection of metaphysical and artistic meanings of the concept of “form” by bringing Thomas Aquinas and Hans Urs von Balthasar into conversation with art and literary criticism, particularly concerning the gender implications of how the category is constructed.   Her other research interests include collaborative work with artists to challenge assumptions about what constitutes religious or spiritual knowledge, and the ways in which religious ritual shapes embodiment at the intersection of nature and culture.

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Select publications

Books

• 2018 Rhythm: A Theological Category. (Oxford University Press). 

Journal articles

• (Forthcoming) "Reading for Form in Doctrine: Literary Approaches to Przywara's Analogia Entis." The Journal of Religion.
• (Forthcoming) "The Rhythms of the Heart and the Movement of Knowledge: Merleau-Ponty and the Epistemological Implications of Entrainment in Hesychast Prayer," in Heart: Knowledge and the Constitution of Being, edited by Peter Schüz and Therese Feiler, Brill.
• (2020) “Rhythmic Flesh: How the Regulation of Bodily Rhythm Contributes to Spirituality in the Jesus Prayer, Medieval Dance, and African American Preaching.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion.
• (2015) “Strife or Rhythm? Martin Heidegger and Giorgio Agamben on the Origin of Art.” Primerjalna književnost (Comparative Literature) 38.1, 209-220.
• (2014) “Erich Przywara and Giorgio Agamben: Rhythm as a Space for Dialogue between Catholic Metaphysics and Postmodernism.” The Heythrop Journal 56.2. 
• (2014) “Why Stanley Hauerwas Needs Blaise Pascal: Sin, Anthropology, and Christian Witness.” Studies in Christian Ethics 27.4, 404-416.

Chapters

• (2015) “Redeeming Duality: Anthropological Split-ness and Embodied Soteriology.” The Resounding Soul: Reflections on the Metaphysics and Vivacity of the Human Person. Eric Austin Lee and Samuel Kimbriel. Eugene, Oregon (eds), (Wipf&Stock).
• (2017) “Rhythmic Eschatology: What Poetry Teaches about the Nature of Time” in Game Over, Good or Bad News? Eschatology in Question.  C. Chalamet, A. Dettwiler, M. Mazzocco, and G. Waterlot (eds), (W. de Gruyter).

Appointments and affiliations

• 2018 – Present Research Fellow, Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Australian Catholic University
• 2015 – 2018   Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, John Wesley Honors College, Indiana Wesleyan University

Projects

• Together with my ACU colleague Dr David Newheiser, I am co-director of a project funded by the Templeton Religion Trust, “Spiritual Understanding in a Secular Age: Engaging Art as Religious Ritual.”

Public engagement

• “God’s Back: Jackson Pollock and the Beatific Vision.” Transpositions. August 5, 2017.
• “On Woolf Works: Ballet and the Nature of the Self.” The Curator. July 15, 2015.