Peter Capretto is a PhD candidate and fellow in Theology and Practice in the area of Religion, Psychology, and Culture at Vanderbilt University, with minors in Philosophy and Theological Studies. A Louisville Dissertation Fellow for his project, “Social Recognition and the Ethics of Empathy in Pastoral Theological Anthropology: A Phenomenological and Relational Psychoanalytic Study,” he researches how social philosophical and psychological structures, such as empathy and recognition, shape ethical and political relations, specifically around experiences of trauma and disability in theological anthropology. His publications on the continental philosophy of religion, practical theology, and religion and the social sciences have appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Journal of Religion and Health, The Heythrop Journal, as well as edited volumes. He is co-editor of Trauma and Transcendence: Limits of Theory and Prospects in Thinking, which is in press with Fordham University Press for early 2018.

Trained clinically as a crisis counselor, hospice chaplain, and pastoral counselor, he uses his teaching and writing to situate religious and philosophical theory in close proximity to cultured and lived experiences of psychic trauma, loss, and mourning. He is also a former Graduate Writing Fellow with Vanderbilt University’s Writing Studio, where he practiced as a writing consultant and instructed in writing pedagogy.