Loyola University Chicago

Department of Theology

Faculty & Staff Directory

Sandra Sullivan-Dunbar, PhD

Title/s:  Associate Professor

Office #:  Crown Center 323

Phone: 773.508.2481

Email: ssull1@luc.edu

CV Link: Sullivan-Dunbar CV

About

Dr. Sullivan-Dunbar’s research in Christian ethics is broadly feminist and interdisciplinary. She explores the intersections of Christian ethics with economic theory, political institutions, history and social policy, with particular reference to women’s moral agency, reproductive lives and reproductive labor.

Dr. Sullivan-Dunbar’s current work explores the relationship between reproductive agency and the agency of democratic citizenship. Her next major project will analyze contemporary Catholic discourse about abortion and propose a Catholic Christian ethic of reproductive justice and multiracial democracy.

Dr. Sullivan-Dunbar’s recent work has addressed economic ethics and the care economy. Her first book, Human Dependency and Christian Ethics, explores the erasure of human dependency and dependent care work from modern political and economic theory as well as from recent Protestant and Catholic conceptions of Christian love. She draws on feminist political theory to suggest necessary elements for a Christian ethic of love and justice that acknowledges the pervasive reality of human dependency and values the work of dependent care.

Degrees

Ph.D. Religious Ethics, University of Chicago
M.Div., Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University
M.A. Ethics and Social Theory, Graduate Theological Union
M.P.P., Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California-Berkeley
A.B. Religious Studies, Brown University

Program Areas

Ethics

Research Interests

Religion and reproductive justice, feminist ethics (Christian, philosophical, political), economic ethics and the care economy, Christian social ethics.

Selected Publications

“Catholic Abortion Discourse and the Erosion of Democracy,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 43:1 (Spring/Summer 2023), 55-73.

“Family: Structures and Conditions,” in Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Religious Ethics, ed. William Schweiker and Elizabeth Bucar. Wiley-Blackwell (2022).

“The Care Economy as Alternative Economy,” in Working Alternatives: American and Catholic Experiments in Work and Economy, ed. John Seitz and Christine Firer Hinze. New York: Fordham University Press (2020), 21-44.

Human Dependency and Christian Ethics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017.