Curriculum Vitae
B.A., Thomas Aquinas College, 2008; Junior Fellow, First Things, 2009-2011; Managing Editor, First Things, 2011-2012; Teaching Assistant, University of Notre Dame, 2013; M.T.S., University of Notre Dame, 2014; Writer, Office of Marketing and Communications, The Catholic University of America, 2014-2017; Teaching Assistant, The Catholic University of America, 2019; Instructor of Record, The Catholic University of America, 2020-2022; Ph.D., The Catholic University of America, ABD; Tutor, Thomas Aquinas College, 2023-
Publications & Presentations
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“A Loving Kind of Knowing: Connatural Knowledge as a Means of Knowing God in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica,” Lumen et Vita: The Graduate Academic Journal of the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry vol. 8, no.2 (2018).
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“Understanding Theology in the Light of Beatitude in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas’s Commentaries on the Sentence,” 47th International Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Conference, Villanova University. October 2021.
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“Theophany as the Medium of Unmediated Vision According to Albert the Great,” 2022 Sacra Doctrina Project Conference on “Grace and Sanctification: Divine Causality, Human Action, and Supernatural Glory.” June 2022.
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“God’s Infinitude in Albert’s Thought on the Beatific Vision,” Albert the Great on the Human Being: An Interdisciplinary Colloquium, University of Fribourg. April 2023
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“God’s Infinitude in Albert’s Thought on the Beatific Vision” in Reflecting on the Human Self: Albert the Great’s Practice of a Medieval Anthropology (Peeters). Forthcoming.
Profile
When she graduated from Thomas Aquinas College, California, in 2008, Meghan Duke never imagined that she would one day join its teaching faculty, let alone at a new campus in New England. She never even expected to attend graduate school.
Miss Duke’s journey to Northfield, Massachusetts, was providentially roundabout, beginning with her primary education in Wilmington, Delaware. “My parents were really good with all of their kids,” she says. “They tried to make sure that each child had the education that was right for them.” As a result, she tasted many flavors of study, from parochial Catholic schools and homeschooling to Waldorf education. Her parents kept their ears open for any new developments in higher — and especially Catholic — education.
“My dad heard about TAC when I was in high school, and he thought it would be a good fit for me,” says Miss Duke. Her father’s hunch proved prescient. “I was always fine in school, but it was always because you’re supposed to do fine in school,” she recalls. “TAC was the first place where I was really invested in the questions we were asking.”
Upon graduating in 2008, Miss Duke set about pursuing a career as a writer and editor. “I worked for a small publishing house associated with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute,” she says. “I then worked for First Things for three years as an editor.” It was a fateful time. “I was interacting with the different disciplines, which are the primary sources for authors at First Things,” she recalls. Revisiting the Great Books as an editor sparked an interest in graduate school.
Following that interest led Miss Duke to the University of Notre Dame, where she earned a master’s degree in theology. Believing her scholarly itch sufficiently scratched, she took a new position as a writer and research assistant for the president of The Catholic University of America — but the itch returned. “The president taught a class on the virtues for honor students at CUA. Helping him research, I realized I wanted to be doing the other part of his job — the teaching part,” she laughs. “That’s what finally pushed me back.”
Now finishing her doctoral studies at CUA with a dissertation on St. Albert the Great’s theology of the Beatific Vision, Miss Duke is thrilled to return to the College as a tutor — and in her native Northeast, no less. Having acquired some teaching experience during graduate school, she is especially excited to employ the Discussion Method in the College’s classrooms and with its students.
“Many students elsewhere have no confidence in their ability to discern meaning in a text, and sometimes even in reality,” she says. “Reading the Blue Book when I was applying, I realized that an intentional part of the College’s program is instilling confidence that reality is understandable, and giving students the tools that make them deserve to be confident.”