David Fekete

Education, Honors, and Activities

1994 Ph.D. University of Virginia, Religion and Literature.

Dissertation:

Title: Eros, Asceticism, and Identity: A Search for Self-Location among Conflicted Erotic Traditions in a Landscape of Leveled Meanings

Committee: Stanley Hauerwas, Robert Wilken, Larry Bouchard, James C. Nohrenberg

Summary: As my discipline is religion and literature, my dissertation is on T.S. Eliot. I analyze Eliot with respect to the ancient philosophical category of eros. T. S. Eliot’s corpus shows ambivalence between two ancient tele of eros: ascetic union with the Absolute and interpersonal expressions. Eliot’s intellectual climate saw ethical choices as completely arbitrary, availing the poet little in his intellectual explorations of eros. Using Charles Taylor’s concept of “hypergoods,” I critique Eliot’s assumption—and that of his culture–that ethical options are arbitrary.

1985 M.T.S. Harvard University, Religion and Culture.

1980 B.A. Summa Cum Laude, Urbana University, Philosophy and Science.

National Dean’s List

Urbana University Dean’s list

Urbana University Academic Society

Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities

Class President, Senior Year

Editor, Urbana College Lancer, Junior Year

Male Lead, University Production, “Bye, Bye Birdie.”