I grew up in a family of eleven in Spokane, WA, and my parents and all my siblings are presently (and in all likelihood permanently) settled at various points west of the Rocky Mountains: Washington, Oregon, Utah, Idaho. I, by contrast, live–and have long lived–in the eastern, southern, and midwestern U.S., which makes me an outlier, in more ways than one. I was born in 1968; went to Brigham Young University in 1987; went on a mission (Korea Seoul West) in 1988; returned to BYU in 1990; married Melissa Madsen in 1993; graduated in 1994; moved east to go to graduate school at Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. in 1995; our first daughter Megan Elaine was born in 1996; we lived in Frankfurt, Germany for a summer while I studied at Goethe-Universität in 1999; our second daughter Caitlyn Barbara was born in 2000; I graduated with my doctorate in 2001; and for the next five years, we sojourned through various state universities (Mississippi State University, Arkansas State University, and Western Illinois University), with our last two daughters, Alison Edra and Kristen Dorothy, being added to our family in 2003 and 2006 respectively. Beginning in August 2006, I took a position at Friends University, a small, non-denominational Christian, liberal arts school in Wichita, KS, as director of their political science program. I write a lot, some of which you can read here at Times & Seasons, more of which can be found on my own blog, In Medias Res. My wife reads a lot, and writes about what she reads; you can find her comments on her blog, Book Nut. Everything else you might want to know about me you can probably figure out through my home page. My worldview is basically communitarian: I believe in belonging, and mostly define myself by my attachments, of which I’ve been blessed with many. I’m a husband and a father, a brother and a son, a Christian and a Mormon, a teacher and a scholar and a colleague, a citizen, a ward member, and–surprisingly enough, to a great number of amazingly patient people–a friend. I also ramble on at great length, but you know that by now.