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Elizabeth Ursic
Born (1959-10-29) October 29, 1959 (age 65)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
EducationUniversity of Pennsylvania (BA, MBA)

Yale Divinity School, (MDiv)

Arizona State University, (PhD)
OccupationScholar of Religion
EmployerMesa Community College
AwardsGuinness World Records for long-distance tap dance
Websitehttps://www.elizabethursic.com/

Elizabeth Ursic is an American theologian, scholar, and musician known for her contributions to feminist theology and the study of women's spirituality. She is a professor of Religious Studies at Mesa Community College in Arizona. In addition to her work as a scholar of religion and a musician, Ursic twice held the Guinness World Records for long-distance tap dance.

Early life

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Elizabeth Ursic was born in Pittsburgh on October 29, 1959. Her parents, Margaret Volk and John Ursic, were first-generation Slovenian Americans. She has a one sibling, a sister, Kathy. The family was raised with a Catholic background. She lived briefly in Argentina as a small child; however, the majority of Elizabeth's childhood was spent in Greenwich, Connecticut.[1]

Ursic took piano and cello lessons while in elementary school.[1] Her interests in music continued in high school where she conducted choirs and bands.[2]

Education

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She was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania where she aimed to complete a double major in Business and Music. However, after the university's dual major with music fell apart, she completed both a bachelor's degree in Marketing and a bachelor's degree in Communications.[2]

After college, she worked at Westinghouse and AT&T for two years each.[2]

She earned an MBA from the Wharton School of Business with a focus on International Relations. While completing her MBA, Ursic continued to foster her interests in music and dance.[2]

After completing her MBA, Ursic traveled to Spain where she started practicing meditation. She maintained her meditation practice while working for Touche Ross in Miami. In the late 1980s, she moved to Sedona, Arizona to deepen her interests in spirituality.[2] While in Sedona, with exposure to musicians from around the world, she also expanded her musical horizons and began creating and performing New Age music.[3]

In 1994 she moved to Ridgecrest, California where the desert environment deepened her spiritual practice. While living in California, Ursic became interested in and inspired by Hildegard of Bingen. Feeling connected to Hildegard's music, Ursic's interest in Catholic mysticism intensified.[3]

Ursic went on a retreat to Medjugorje and on pilgrimages to Lourdes, Fatima, and Santiago. Although Ursic struggled to reconcile the universality of her mysticism with Catholicism, her experiences while on pilgrimage led her to seek a return to her Catholic roots.[3]

After returning from her pilgrimages, Ursic moved to Hawaii where she taught courses at Maui Community College for a year. However, Ursic left the position after a year to move home to Connecticut to help take care of her father. There she began to work at a local Catholic Church.[4]

While working in her local parish, Ursic pursued a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School, a degree that she earned in 2003. Her studies were supported by a fellowship from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. At Yale Divinity, she focused images of Wisdom as a woman in the Hebrew Scriptures. After her position at the parish ended, she worked briefly at Sacred Heart University until landing a full-time position teach religious studies at Mesa Community College in 2003.[4]

In 2010 she completed her Ph.D. in Religious Studies at Arizona State University.[4] Her dissertation concentrated on women's spirituality and the use of feminine imagery in Christian worship.

Career

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Ursic began teaching religious studies at Mesa Community College in 2003. Ursic teaches classes on religion, gender, religion and art, and other topics.[5] She has worked as an adjunct at the California Institute of Integral Studies and has served as a spiritual director for the Franciscan Renewal Center in Scottsdale, Arizona.[4] She has had visiting roles at the University of Edinburgh and in Auroville, India. [6]

She is actively involved with the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL). She served as co-chair of the AAR-SBL Women's Caucus from 2013-2023.[6][7][8]

Ursic also works as a musician. She has produced two albums--an album of New Age music, Unspoken Truth (1995), and an album of instrumental music, Gratitude (2019).[3][6] She composes for and performs with numerous instruments including cello, piano, synthesizer, lap harp, ukulele, and voice.[9]

Ursic provided a virtual concert for Arizona State University during the Covid-19 pandemic. The concert was later streamed on YouTube. The performance includes remarks about the music, the role of music in Christianity and spirituality, and the connections between music and her life.[10] Ursic's music reflected on concepts of ecofeminist theology and she acknowledged Rosemary Radford Reuther as an influence on her work.[11]

Along with Colleen Hartung, Elizabeth Ursic contributed to the launch of the Women in Religion WikiProject.[6]

Personal life

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After meeting Frank Nightingale, Ursic began attending an Episcopal Church.[6]

Ursic broke the Guinness World Records in long-distance tap dance twice, once in 1986[2] and again in 1993. That same year she was featured in an issue of Sport Illustrated for tap dancing 13.1 miles during a half-marathon in Arizona.[3][12][13]

Influence

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Her book Women, Ritual, and Power: Placing Female Imagery of God in Christian Worship (2014) examines how incorporating female depictions of the divine can transform worship practices and empower communities.[1] A review of the book recognizes the work as "important" and observes that it is a "call for action" to incorporate more female imagery in Christian religious ritual.[14]

Similarly, in a critical engagement with the with Ursic's article. "Bi the Way: Rethinking Categories of Religious Identity", Heather Shipley commended Ursic's work (suggesting the use of "bi" and "trans" to describe religious status) for enhancing "the ways that religious identity is conceptualized."[15]

Ursic continues to contribute to academic conferences, journals, and workshops, promoting a more inclusive approach to theology and worship practices. She has been an active member of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual[16] and chaired the Women's Caucus of the American Academy of Religion for ten years.[8]

Ursic is a board member for the Arizona Interfaith Movement.[17]

Selected publications

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  • Ursic, Elizabeth. Women, Ritual, and Power: Placing Female Imagery of God in Christian Worship. State University of New York Press, 2014. ISBN 1-438-45286-1
  • Ursic, E. (2014). Bi the Way: Rethinking Categories of Religious Identity. The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society, 3(4), 29.
  • Ursic, Elizabeth. "The Impact of Female Divine Imagery in Christian Worship." In Feminism and Religion: How Faiths View Women and Their Rights, edited by Michele Paludi, Praeger, 2016.
  • Ursic, Elizabeth. "Music as a Pathway to the Divine Feminine." Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, vol. 29, no. 2, 2013, pp. 45–62.

References

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  1. ^ a b c Meyer, C. "Elizabeth Ursic: Scholar and Artist." Chapter 6. In Hartung, C.D., ed. Women Advancing Knowledge Equity. Women in Religion, Vol. 3. The Parliament of the World's Religions. Chicago, IL. 2023. p. 153.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Meyer, p. 154.
  3. ^ a b c d e Meyer, p. 155.
  4. ^ a b c d Meyer, p. 156.
  5. ^ "Faculty Spotlight | Religious Studies | Mesa Community College". www.mesacc.edu. Retrieved 2025-03-30.
  6. ^ a b c d e Meyer, p. 157.
  7. ^ "AAR Leadership: Elizabeth Ursic". American Academy of Religion. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  8. ^ a b "Women's Caucus Chair Emeritus". Womens Caucus AARSBL. Retrieved 2025-03-02.
  9. ^ Meyer, p. 160.
  10. ^ Meyer, p. 161.
  11. ^ Meyer, p. 162.
  12. ^ "93 things that went right in '93". Sports Illustrated Vault | SI.com. Archived from the original on 2022-08-14. Retrieved 2025-02-09.
  13. ^ The Guinness book of records 1997. Internet Archive. Guinness Pub. 1996. ISBN 978-0-85112-693-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  14. ^ Dugan, K.A. (April 2015). "Women, ritual, and power: placing female imagery of God in Christian worship". Choice. 52 (8): 1333 – via ProQuest Central.
  15. ^ Shipley, Heather (2018-11-23), "Apathy or Misunderstanding?: Youth's Reflections on Their Religious Identity in Canada", Youth, Religion, and Identity in a Globalizing Context, Brill, pp. 191–210, doi:10.1163/9789004388055_011, ISBN 978-90-04-38805-5, retrieved 2025-05-22
  16. ^ "February 2021 WATERtalk with Colleen Hartung and Elizabeth Ursic – WATER – Womens Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual". Retrieved 2025-03-30.
  17. ^ "Elizabeth Ursic – Arizona Interfaith Movement". Retrieved 2025-03-30.
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