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Diana L. Eck |
Diana L. Eck is Professor of Comparative Religion
and Indian Studies at Harvard University where
she serves on the Committee on the Study of Religion
in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She is also
a member of the Department of Sanskrit and Indian
Studies as well as the Faculty of Divinity. She
received her B.A. from Smith College (1967) in
Religion, her M.A. from the School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of London (1968)
in South Asian History, and her Ph.D. from Harvard
University (1976) in the Comparative Study of
Religion. Diana Eck and her partner Dorothy Austin
are currently serving as Masters of Lowell House
at Harvard.
Professor Eck's work on India includes the books
Banaras, City of Light (Knopf 1982) and Darsan:
Seeing the Divine Image in India. (Anima 1981;
Columbia University Press 1996). With Devaki Jain
she edited Speaking of Faith: Global Perspectives
on Women, Religion, and Social Change, a book
which emerged from a jointly planned interfaith
women?s conference. With Francoise Mallison, she
edited Devotion Divine: Bhakti Traditions from
the Regions of India, essays honoring the French
Indology scholar Charlotte Vaudeville. Her book
Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman
to Banaras (Beacon Press, 1993), studies the question
of religious difference in the context of Christian
theology and the comparative study of religion.
It addresses issues of Christian faith in a world
of many faiths and, more broadly, the issues of
religious diversity that challenge people of every
faith. Encountering God won the 1994 Melcher Book
Award of the Unitarian Universalist Association
and the 1995 Louisville Grawemeyer Book Award
in Religion, given for work that reflects a significant
breakthrough in our understanding of religion.
Since 1991, Diana Eck has been heading a research
team at Harvard University to explore the new
religious diversity of the United States and its
meaning for the American pluralist experiment.
The Pluralism Project, funded by the Lilly Endowment,
the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Ford Foundation,
and the Rockefeller Foundation has been documenting
the growing presence of the Muslim, Buddhist,
Hindu, Sikh, Jain, and Zoroastrian communities
in the U.S. This research project has involved
students and professors in "hometown"
research on America's new religious landscape.
In 1994, Diana Eck and the Pluralism Project published
World Religions in Boston, A Guide to Communities
and Resources, which introduces the religious
traditions and communities of Boston -- from Native
Americans, Christians, and Jews to Muslims, Buddhists,
Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and Zoroastrians. The Pluralism
Project's interactive CD-ROM, On Common Ground:
World Religions in America, a multimedia introduction
to the world?s religions in the American context,
was published in 1997 by Columbia University Press.
It has won major awards from Media & Methods,
EdPress, and Educom. Her new book, A New Religious
America (Harper San Francisco, 2001) addresses
the challenges for the United States of the new
religious diversity that is now ours.
In 1996, Diana L. Eck was appointed to a U.S.
State Department Advisory Committee on Religious
Freedom Abroad, a twenty-member commission charged
with advising the Secretary of State on enhancing
and protecting religious freedom in the overall
context of human rights. In 1998, Eck received
the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton
and the National Endowment for the Humanities
for her work on American religious pluralism.
For more in-depth biographies, please visit:
www.pluralism.org
www.pluralism.org - A New Religious America |
