Subject Specialization:
Theology & Religious Studies; Humanities & Classical Studies
Bio:
My passion for libraries began in the small-town public library of my youth, The Ulysses Philomathic Society library in Trumansburg, N.Y. I have lived in Abington, PA for most of my adult life. In fact, my wife and I met in art class at Abington High School, and although we moved around a bit, we eventually settled back in Southeastern PA to raise our family. My wife and I are converts to Catholicism and we received our confirmation in Sussex, New Brunswick, Canada. I came to Villanova University as a librarian in 1998. Currently I am the Associate Director for Research Services and Scholarly Engagement. I was a regular adjunct to the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova from 2000 to 2016. Since 2016, I have been an instructor in the Augustine and Culture Seminar Program.
I love books, mid-twentieth century movies, theatre, classical music and slow food.
Some thinkers and subjects that fascinate me:
» Homer, Aeschylus, Plato and ancient Greek culture
» Cicero, Virgil, Ovid and ancient Roman culture
» Plotinus and Neoplatonist philosophy
» Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria and the Early Church fathers
» Nicene-Constantinopolitan Trinitarianism and Chalcedonian Christology
» Augustine of Hippo and the Augustinian tradition
» Classical and Medieval architecture
» G. Palestrina, C. Monteverdi and Italian Renaissance music
» Shakespeare, Molière and early modern drama
» Post-Reformation Lutheran controversies
» G. F. Handel, F. J. Hadyn, R. Wagner and German classical music
» J. W. v. Goethe, F. v. Shiller, C. M. v. Weber and German Romanticism
» Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and 19th-century women writers
» J. H. Newman and the Oxford Movement
» A. Chekhov, B. Brecht and modern dramaturgy
» T. S. Eliot, Dorothy Sayers and 20th-century Anglo-Catholic writers
» G. K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh and modern British Roman Catholic writers
» Martin Heidegger and fundamental ontology
» Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt and 20th-century women philosophers
» Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty and 20th-century Southern women writers
» J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and 20th-century otherworldly literature
» Hans Urs von Balthasar and Ressourcement theology
» John Paul II and theological personalism
» Roman and Byzantine Catholicism
Contact Information:
Location: Room 230darren.poley@villanova.edu
610-519-6371
Education:
Degrees:
• B.A., Liberal Arts (Focus: Classical Studies & Political Science), Gettysburg C., Gettysburg, PA, 1990.
• M.A., Religion (Focus: Historical Theology & Church History), LTSS, Columbia, S.C., 1995.
• M.S., Library and Information Science (Focus: Academic Librarianship & Library Management), Drexel U., Phila., PA, 1996.
Undergraduate research interests:
› mystery religion of Samothrace
› late-republican and early-imperial Roman civilization
› ancient political philosophy
› medieval and military history
› modern American government
› Anglo-American turn-of-the-century society
(British Victorian Age/Edwardian Era and
American Gilded Age/Progressive Era
sociopolitical history)
Graduate research interests:
› classical Christology, ecclesiology, Mariology and liturgical theology
› narrative, canonical, and cultural-linguistic approaches of postliberal theology
› Alexandrian, Cappadocian and Augustinian theology
› Lutheran confessionalism and Protestant evangelical-catholicism
› Eastern Orthodox neo-patristic synthesis and Catholic communio movement