Donna Bowman

Donna Bowman is Professor of Honors Interdisciplinary Studies at the Norbert O. Schedler Honors College at the University of Central Arkansas. Her training in philosophical theology and religious studies has led to a scholarly career focused on process theology and Reformed theology, especially the work of Alfred North Whitehead and Karl Barth. She has held several offices in regional and national scholarly organizations, including the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Religion.

Donna's current research investigates the meanings and motivations experienced by the makers -- mostly women -- of symbolically significant crisis fabrics. Following a groundbreaking study of prayer shawl ministries, she surveyed and interviewed knitters and crocheters who made the pussyhats worn at the 2017 Women's Marches, and the sewists making masks in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She is an active critic of popular culture, publishing as a contributing writer on The A.V. Club. Her interdisciplinary teaching draws from these diverse competencies, encompassing courses on popular and material culture and their theological intersections. She frequently delivers presentations on technologically-enabled pedagogies at regional and national conferences.

In and out of the classroom, Donna is an avid knitter and participant in social media. Along with her husband, a freelance writer and widely respected critic of popular culture, and her two children, she embraces the Southern life to which she was born and bred.