Nathan Carlin, PhD
Nathan Carlin is an Assistant Professor in the John P. McGovern Center for Health, Humanities, and the Human Spirit in the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. He also holds an appointment in the Department of Family Medicine in the University of Texas Medical School at Houston.
Dr. Carlin is the son of a steel mill worker. He grew up in western Pennsylvania, some thirty miles north of Pittsburgh. He graduated with College Honors in History from Westminster College in New Wilmington, PA; he holds a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Seminary in Princeton, NJ, where he concentrated on pastoral theology; and he holds Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Religious Studies from Rice University in Houston, TX. Carlin defended his doctoral dissertation at Rice University in August 2009, becoming the first Rice graduate student in Religious Studies to complete the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree (with a conferral in January 2010) in a four-year period. And he also became the first Rice graduate student in Religious Studies to procure a full-time faculty appointment in a four-year period. Carlin attributes both of these “firsts” to good luck, to good mentors, and to his blue-collar work ethic.
Carlin has published widely. Most of his articles are full-length essays published in peer-reviewed journals, though he has published a number of book chapters and encyclopedia articles as well. By the culmination of his graduate education, Carlin published over 40 essays as well as dozens of book reviews.
Carlin is academically active in other ways as well. He serves, for example, as Book Review Editor for Pastoral Psychology, a leading and historic journal in the fields of psychology of religion and pastoral care, and he also serves as a sub-editor for Religious Studies Review. He gives talks and presentations all over the country. And he teaches, from time to time, for the Continuing Education School at Rice University.
Carlin understands himself to be a pastoral psychologist working in the field of medical humanities. In addition to his secular academic training, he also draws on his pastoral training—which includes full-time parish ministry in Scotland as well as full-time chaplaincy in a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey—and his pastoral interests to address questions of meaning and spirituality in health and in health care fields. Currently Carlin is working on revising his dissertation for publication, which focuses on the relationship between life and work among academics. He has also completed a co-authored book manuscript on limbo experiences in everyday life. In the near future Carlin would like to write a textbook for medical humanities.
