Diana Fritz Cates
Professor, Religious Ethics
Diana Cates received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Brown University in 1990. She joined the University of Iowa faculty that same year.
Research:
Dr. Cates’s research focuses on religious ethics and moral psychology. She works primarily within the Aristotelian-Thomistic moral tradition on the nature of the self, the structure of virtue, the relationship between virtue and natural law, particular virtues such as love and compassion, the internal causes of moral evil, the structure of emotion, particular emotions such as anger and hatred, the role of emotions in the moral life, and the way the religious imagination can influence the cultivation of virtue and the deliberate formation of moral emotions.
Dr. Cates works secondarily on issues of bioethics (especially the ethical implications of genetic science and technology), sexual ethics (including questions of religion, gender, and sexuality), the uses of creative literature in ethics, comparative religious ethics, and the ethics of human rights (especially conceptions of the ground of human dignity and the protection of girls and women from sexual violence).
Teaching:
Dr. Cates teaches a range of undergraduate and graduate courses in religious studies and ethics.
- 032:016 Religion and Liberation
- 032:017 Sexual Ethics
- 032:162 Genes and the Human Condition
- 032:196 Senior Seminar for Undergraduates
- 032:201 Teaching Religious Studies
- 032:226 Graduate Seminars on various topics: Ethics of Aristotle and Aquinas, Ethics of Søren Kierkegaard, Ethics of Virtue, Religion and Emotion, 20th Century Christian Ethics.
Selected Publications (for complete list, please view Dr. Cates's CV):
- Cates, Diana Fritz (2009). Aquinas on the Emotions:
A Religious-Ethical Inquiry. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. - Cates, Diana Fritz, and Paul Lauritzen, eds. (2001). Medicine and the Ethics of Care. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
- Cates, Diana Fritz (1997). Choosing to Feel: Virtue, Friendship, and Compassion for Friends. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.
- Cates, Diana Fritz (2010). Experiential Narratives of Rape and Torture. Journal of Religious Ethics, Sumner B. Twiss and John Kelsay, eds., 38/1, 43-66.
- Cates, Diana Fritz (2005). Spending the Day with a Good Friend: Autobiography, Moral Character, and the Religious Imagination. Seeking Goodness and Beauty: The Use of Arts in Theological Ethics, Patricia Lamoureux and Kevin O’Neil, eds. Lanham, Md.: Roman and Littlefield, 33-54.
- Cates, Diana Fritz (2002). The Virtue of Temperance. The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen J. Pope. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 321-33
Awards & Service:
- Trustee. Journal of Religious Ethics, 2010-present.
- Member. Editorial Board. Journal of Religious Ethics, 2003-2010.
- Member. The University of Iowa Center for Human Rights Executive Committee and Board, 2002-present.
- Member. Executive Committee. The Society of Christian Ethics, 2009-2010.
- Member. Board of Directors. The Society of Christian Ethics, 2006-2010.
- Ethics Representative. Center for Congenital and Inherited Disorders Advisory Committee, Iowa Department of Public Health, 2003-2006.
- Member. Editorial Board, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, 1998-2001.
- Chair, Department of Religious Studies, 2008-2009 (interim).
- The Dartmouth Summer Faculty Institute on the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Human Genome Project, 2000.
- Excellence in Teaching Award, University of Iowa Council on Teaching, 1993.