Professor Vernon W. Cisney hails from Gettysburg College, where he was awarded the Ralph Cavaliere Endowed Teaching Award in 2017. He earned his PhD in philosophy at Purdue University. Prof. Cisney’s research interests lie at the intersection of twentieth-century continental philosophy, religion, literature, film, and politics.
Praise for Prof. Vernon Cisney
“In my thirty-five years of college teaching, I never met a professor more creative, erudite, and engaging than Vern Cisney. He has the ability, born of hard work and genuine love for his subject, to make the most difficult of topics fascinatingly accessible without sacrificing rigor and insight. He truly is a master teacher!”
–Fr. Kerry Walters, Pastor, Holy Spirit American National Catholic Church
“Professor Vern Cisney is one of the best philosophers I know. His impressive prowess in the classroom is supported by a remarkable depth of careful scholarship in print. He is well-loved by his students and deeply respected by his peers. Listeners will find no devil-may-care attitude here but instead the devil deep in the details.”
–Jonathan Beever, Associate Professor of Ethics and Digital Culture, University of Central Florida
Dennis Frank, Chicago, IL (verified owner) –
I purchased this lecture series as a compliment to reading St. Augustine’s City of God with UChicago’s Graham School alumni sequence on literature from the Middle Ages. Augustine spends a lot of time on demons and angels. In short, the dogma of Augustine was so overwhelming that I needed to know how much of this Devil truly appears in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. Once that question was answered (not a lot), as I turned to Prof. Vernon Cisney’s lecture series on The Devil: A Biography for a riveting 10+ hours of magnificent and thorough cultural influences throughout time. Each 25 min. lecture is lean and thought provoking. I listened to 3 a day over the course of a week and will revisit the series all over again. Prof. Cisney starts by asking you what your image of the Devil may be, a specter we all seem to share. With a deep dive into the both bibles and the birth of Christianity (one slight but important digression I really need to hear laid out) and covering centuries of art history, literature, philosophical thought, one gets to see how the image and personification of Lucifer started as a sketch of rebellion to the painterly and cinematic Prince of Darkness. Although it begins with early Hebrew text and belief and ends with the American Evangelical Satanic Panic of the 1980’s, the true treat of this series is the middle core of literary representations of Satan from Dante, Milton, Goethe, Twain, Melville, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov. Every lecture is very self-contained on one specific aspect, and each succeeding lecture gives you a few moments to recap the previous episode in order to take things to a higher level. Don’t be scared! It’s a riveting lecture series on the mythos of Satan.
Most highly recommended!