Kimberly Vrudny is an associate professor of systematic theology at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she also serves as founding project director for HIV/AIDS initiatives through the University’s office of service learning. She is the author of Friars, Scribes, and Corpses: A Marian Confraternal Reading of The Mirror of Human Salvation (Leuven: Peeters, 2010).
She is also co-editor of two books, the most recent with Robin Jensen, Visual Theology: Forming and Transforming the Community Through the Arts (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2009), which includes Vrudny’s essay, “Deforming and Reforming Beauty: Disappearance and Presence in the Theo-political Imagination of Ricardo Cinalli.” The second is with Wilson Yates, Arts, Theology and the Church: New Intersections (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2005), which includes Vrudny’s essay, “Spirit Standing Still: Documenting Beauty in Photography.” She served on the staff of ARTS: The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies for sixteen years (1993-2009). She is the recipient of several grants, including a 2006 grant from the Wabash Center for a two-year consultation on “Best Practices in Teaching Theology and the Arts in the Undergraduate Classroom.” She has been recognized by her peers and students for excellence in teaching, receiving the “Global Citizenship Award” in 2010 and the faculty award in service-learning in 2006, both awarded by the University of St. Thomas. In 2009, she was nominated for the prestigious Ehrlich Faculty Award for Service Learning awarded by former President Jimmy Carter. Her current work involves researching works of protest, resistance, and prophetic art created in relation to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. By interpreting these works with theological lenses informed by a Christian understanding of the concept of “beauty,” she wishes to contribute to the emerging field of a “political theological aesthetics.” She was on sabbatical in South Africa, Thailand, and Mexico during academic year 2009-2010, documenting in photograph thirty years into the pandemic thirty people impacted by HIV/AIDS as well as organizations devoted to their care (see http://30years30lives.org).