ISFM Faculty

Dr. Burke has taught at Montclair State University since 2008, in both the Religious Studies and Humanities departments. She has Masters degrees in Religion and Psychology, as well as a Masters of Library Service. She also holds a Doctorate in Literary Studies from Drew University. Her focus has been on the history of the afterlife from archaic religious systems to modern times, and how our ideas about death and life after death inform our view of the Feminine. She worked as a librarian for 27 years, retiring from an Associate University Librarian position at Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she headed up Technical Services, Acquisitions, and Library Systems. She has hosted the Chthonia podcast for the last 5 years, which is dedicated to exploring the “dark” Feminine in myth and folklore. 

Dr. Madloch is a New Jersey-based scholar, writer, and photographer. She holds a PhD in Humanities from Silesian University in Poland and studied photography at the International Center of Photography and the Penumbra Foundation in New York. Currently, she teaches courses in Creativity and Literature at Montclair State University in New Jersey. She is the author of over 30 scholarly articles and a book about Joseph Brodsky. Her research interests focus on the figure of the trickster, particularly the female trickster, and the intersections between photography and literature. Her photographs have been exhibited in the US, Europe, and Australia.

Dr. Kingsbury has a doctorate in anthropology from Oxford University. She has lived in Africa and Mexico researching religion, spirituality and myth. She currently teaches at UBC and Alexander College. She has authored a book on Santa Muerte and over 30 articles focusing on spirituality and women, in particular Santa Muerte, the Mexican female folk saint of death. 

Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, Max Orsini is a poet, literary critic, singer-songwriter, and professor. He serves as an administrator and international student advisor at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. He obtained his doctorate from Drew University, and his doctoral work was published in 2018 as “The Buddhist Beat Poetics of Diane Di Prima and Lenore Kandel.”