Fannie Bialek

Fannie Bialek is an Assistant Professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Her work focuses on contemporary religious and philosophical approaches to interpersonal relationships marked by love, justice, and care, or their absence. Her first book, Love in Time (Chicago, 2025), argues for a consideration of love as a relationship of uncertainty. Her next book, Waiting with Others: Vulnerability as Imagination, develops a view of vulnerability as a description of how we imagine possible futures and how our anticipation of them defines our social practices. Bialek teaches a popular gateway course for undergraduates, “The Good Life between Religion and Politics,” among other courses in religious ethics and political thought. She also directs Washington University’s Knowledge for Freedom Summer Seminar, “Citizenship and Freedom,” an intensive humanities program for Saint Louis-area high school students. After graduating from Princeton University summa cum laude, Bialek earned a Ph.D. in Religion and Critical Thought from Brown University, where she then taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor. Alongside her teaching and research, Bialek has worked in sexual health education and intimate violence response and prevention for over two decades.