Phyllis Zagano (born August 25, 1947)[1] is an American author and academic. She has written and spoken on the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church and is an advocate for the ordination of women as deacons.[2][3][4][5] Her writings have been variously translated into Indonesian, Czech, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.[6]
Phyllis Zagano | |
---|---|
Born | |
Alma mater | |
Occupation(s) | Researcher and adjunct professor |
Employer | Hofstra University |
Awards | Fulbright Fellow, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland, 2009; Fulbright Senior Scholar, Waterford Institute of Technology, 2015 |
Zagano was born in Queens, New York in 1947.[1] She graduated from Sacred Heart Academy in 1965. She has a BA from Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York (1969); master's degrees in communications from Boston University (1970), in literature from Long Island University (1972), and in theology from St. John's University (1991); and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1979.[1]
Zagano was program officer at the National Humanities Center from 1979 to 1980, and taught at Fordham University from 1980 to 1984.[1] She was a researcher at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York from 1984 to 1986 and a Coolidge Fellow at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1987.[1] She taught at Boston University from 1988 to 1999.[1]
Since 2002, Zagano has taught at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, where she is senior research associate-in-residence and adjunct professor of religion.[1] In 2005 she held a visiting professorship at the Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. In 2009, she was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Limerick's Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, Ireland, where she was a lecturer.[1] In 2015 she was a Fulbright Senior Specialist at the Waterford Institute of Technology, in Waterford, Ireland.
Zagano's scholarship and work as a theologian has been recognized by both awards and critical engagement. She received "Layperson of the Year" award from Voice of the Faithful in 2012.[7] She received the Isaac Hecker Award for Social Justice from the Paulist Center of Boston in 2014.[8][9] Two years later, in 2016, Pope Francis appointed Zagano to the Papal Study Commission on the Women's Diaconate.[10][11] Prior to disputing with her ideas, Crisis Magazine described Zagano as "one of the most high-ranking feminists in the Catholic Church" in 2019.[12]
Zagano's career also includes over 30 years as public affairs office in the U.S. Navy Reserve. She retired from the Navy Reserve at the rank of Commander.[1]
Beginning in 2008, she has regularly donated her papers to the Women and Leadership Archives of Loyola University Chicago.[1]
Zagano's publications include:
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: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Archived 23 June 2015.