The following is an excerpt from the BU Today article “25 Charles River Campus Faculty Receive Promotions” featuring Associate Professor of Theology Rebecca Copeland and Associate Professor of New Testament Luis Menéndez- Antuña, published on July 1, 2025.
Twenty-five faculty on Boston University’s Charles River Campus have just received promotions, 17 to the rank of associate professor with tenure, 5 to the rank of non-tenure associate professor, and 3 to the rank of professor with tenure. They come from eight colleges and schools and represent a breadth of academic interests and fields of research.
The news comes following the recent promotion of 23 additional Charles River Campus faculty to the rank of full professor.
“Each in their unique way demonstrates daily the caliber of education and accomplishment possible through innovation, creativity, leadership, and commitment to student success,” BU Provost Gloria Waters wrote in an email to faculty and staff announcing the most recent promotions. “We see great things ahead for them and are pleased they have chosen BU as the institution at which to advance their careers.”
…
Rebecca Copeland, School of Theology associate professor of theology, explores how classical Christian texts and doctrine can be reconstructed through the lens of environmental studies, engaging diverse fields, such as hydrogeology, biology, archaeozoology, and botany. She has published two monographs, Created Being: Expanding Creedal Christology (2020) and Entangled Being: Unoriginal Sin and Wicked Problems (2024), along with five peer-reviewed articles in top journals. A new book, Replanting the Uprooted: A Social-Ecological Approach to the Agricultural Parables, is in development. She is a past recipient of the Canadian-American Theological Association’s Jack and Phyllis Middleton Award for Excellence in Bible and Theology and a recent Louisville Project Grant for Researchers. She was named the 2023–2024 Exemplary Teacher of the Year Award by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry and received the 2024 Teaching Excellence Award from the STH student body.
Luis Menéndez-Antuña, STH associate professor of New Testament, is a New Testament scholar whose work draws from Latin American liberation theologies, critical carceral studies, trauma studies, Afro-pessimism, and feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories. He has published two monographs—Bridging the Interpretive Abyss: Reading the New Testament After the Cultural Studies Turn (2024) and Thinking Sex with the Great Whore: Deviant Sexualities and Empire in the Book of Revelation (2018)—in addition to 12 peer-reviewed articles and 10 essays in top journals, and has edited volumes in his guild. A frequent speaker at national and international conferences, he has been supported by 6 research grants and 10 teaching grants, and is a past recipient of the Society of Biblical Literature’s A. R. Pete Diamond Award for Integrative Scholarship.
…