Specializes in Islamic Studies with primary interests in Sufism Shi'ism, and the intellectual and social history of Persianate Islamic societies (Iran and Central and Southern Asia). He is the author of Messianic Hopes and Mystical Visions: The Nurbakhshiya Between Medieval and Modern Islam and Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis. His current major projects are books entitled Bodies of God's Friends: Sufism and Society in Medieval Islam (a study in religious history focusing on corporeal themes) and Baha' ad-Din Naqshband: Hagiographic Portraits of a Sufi Saint from Bukhara (translation and study of 15th-century narratives dedicated to a Sufi master).
Carl W. Bielefeldt Professor (California-Berkeley)
Specializes in East Asian Buddhism, with particular emphasis on the intellectual history of the Zen tradition. He is the author of Dogen's Manuals of Zen Meditation and other works on early Japanese Zen and serves as editor of the Soto Zen Text Project Director of the Stanford Center for Buddhist Studies
Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert Associate Professor and Graduate Director (Graduate Theological Union)
Specializes in Judaism: talmudic literature and culture. Her interests
include gender in Jewish culture; the relationship between Judaism and
Christianity in Late Antiquity; the discourses of orthodoxy versus heresy;
the connection between religion and space; and rabbinic conceptions
of Judaism with respect to Greco-Roman culture. She is the author of
Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical
Gender (2000), which won the Salo Baron Prize for a best first book
in Jewish Studies of that year and was a finalist for the National Jewish
Book Award in Jewish Scholarship. She also co-edited The Cambridge
Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature (2007), together
with Martin Jaffee (University of Washington). Currently, she is working
on a manuscript entitled Replacing the Nation: Judaism, Diaspora
and the Neighborhood. Prof. Fonrobert is the Co-Director of the
Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University.
Hester G. Gelber Professor and Department Chair (Wisconsin)
Specializes in late medieval religious thought. She teaches courses on philosophy of religion as well as medieval Christianity. She has written extensively on medieval Dominicans, including: Exploring the Boundaries of Reason: Three Questions on the Nature of God by Robert Holcot OP and most recently It Could Have Been Otherwise: Contingency and Necessity in Dominican Theology at Oxford 1300-1350. Her current book project is a study of the development of the medieval religious cosmos as a mythologized system of retributive justice.
Robert C. Gregg Teresa Hihn Moore Professor, Emeritus (Pennsylvania)
Specializes in the history of Christianity to the year 700 and concentrates research and teaching in three areas: (1) early Jewish, Christian and Muslim interpretations of a number of biblical and qur'anic "sacred" stories which the Hebrew Bible, Christian Bible and the Qur'an have in common,
(2) interactions between Jews, "pagans," Christians and Muslims in the late antique and early Byzantine periods, and (3) developments internal to the Christian movement in its opening centuries-appropriations of Greek and Roman philosophy, disputes over orthodox and heterodox teachings, formation of the canon of Christian scriptures, emergence of ritual practices. creeds, and church institutions.
Paul Harrison George Edwin Burnell Professor of Religious Studies (Australian National University)
Specializes in Buddhist literature and history, especially that of the Mahayana, and the study of Buddhist manuscripts in Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan. Currently working on editions and translations of a number of Mahayana and Mainstream Buddhist sutras, including the Vajracchedika (Diamond Sutra), as well as a general study of issues of authority, textual transmission and innovation in Mahayana Buddhism. He is the author of The Samadhi of Direct Encounter with the Buddhas of the Present, and of numerous journal articles on Buddhist sacred texts and their interpretation. He is also one of the editors of the series Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection.
Specializing in Hinduism, she writes on the poetry of North India's great 15th and 16th-century "poet-saints," their ongoing popularity and influence, and modes of performing their works. Research and teaching interests include poetry of religious experience, gender, performance, and reception of religious texts and practices by people in different social and historical circumstances. Publications include The Bijak of Kabir (translations and essays) and articles on interpretation and performance of the Ramayana.
Barbara Pitkin Acting Assistant Professor (Chicago)
Specializes in the history of Christian
thought, with a particular emphasis on the religious developments in late medieval
and early modern Europe. She teaches courses on medieval Christianity, sixteenth-century
reformations, the history of biblical interpretation, and women and religion. She is
the author of a book on John Calvin’s understanding of faith and numerous articles on
his interpretation of scripture and children in Calvin’s Geneva. Most recently she has
co-edited The Formation of Clerical and Confessional Identities in Early Modern Europe.
Fabrizio Pregadio Acting Associate Professor (Venice)
Specializes in Daoism and
Chinese thought and religion. His research focuses on the doctrines
of Daoism (in particular, their foundation in metaphysical and
cosmological thought); their application to alchemy, meditation, and
self-cultivation techniques; and the historical development and
interrelation of these traditions. He is the editor of The
Encyclopedia of Taoism and the author of Great Clarity: Daoism and
Alchemy in Early Medieval China. He is currently working on a book
on the doctrinal and textual tradition of Daoist "inner
alchemy" (neidan) and participating in a project on the Daozang
jiyao (Essentials of the Daoist Canon) based at the Institute for
Research in Humanities of Kyoto University.
Specializes in the early centuries of Islamic religion and teaches courses on pre-modern intellectual history. He has done research on the early history of the Qur'an, the hadith literature, and the early legal debates about women in the public space. His doctoral dissertation examined methods of textual interpretation applied in the Hanafi school of law in the pre-modern period. He has taught Approaching Religion (covering early Islam), and courses on pre-modern theology, pre-modern law, and the early history of the Qur'an.
Bldg 70, Rm 71A 650-725-2933
Tom Sheehan Professor (Fordham)
Specializes in contemporary European
philosophy and its relation to religious questions, with particular
interests in Heidegger and Roman Catholicism. His books include:
Becoming Heidegger (2007); Edmund Husserl: Psychological and
Transcendental Phenomenology and the Encounter with Heidegger (1997);
Karl Rahner: The Philosophical Foundations (1987); The First Coming:
How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity (1986); and Heidegger, the
Man and the Thinker (1981) List of Publications
Brent Sockness Associate Professor and Undergraduate Director (Chicago)
Specializing in modern Western religious thought, his teaching covers a variety of exemplary figures, movements, and topics in the history of European, especially Christian, thought since the 17th century. His research focuses on German Protestant theology and ethics in the 19th century, most currently the ethical theory of the early 19th-century philosopher, theologian, and humanist, Friedrich Schleiermacher. He is author of Against False Apologetics: Wilhelm Herrmann and Ernst Troeltsch in Conflict and numerous articles on Herrmann, Troeltsch, and Schleiermacher. He has held fellowships from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the American Academy in Berlin, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is Chair of the Schleiermacher Group of the American Academy of Religion and Vice-President of the German Schleiermacher-Gesellschaft. He serves also as the Department's Undergraduate Director as well as on the steering committees of Stanford's programs in Ethics in Society and Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities. A Resident Fellow, he lives with his family in Lantana, Stanford's Humanities Focus House.
Specializes in comparative religious ethics, virtue theory, selected Christian thinkers, and classical Chinese thought. He is the author of The Ideas of Newman: Christianity and Human Religiosity and Mencius and Aquinas: Theories and Conceptions of Courage, as well numerous journal articles.
Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University, Building 70, 450 Serra Mall, Main Quad, Stanford, CA 94305-2165
phone 650-723-3322 | fax 650-725-1476
Shahzad Bashir
Carl W. Bielefeldt
Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert 
Hester G. Gelber
Robert C. Gregg
Paul Harrison
Linda Hess
Barbara Pitkin
Fabrizio Pregadio
Behnam Sadeghi
Bldg 70, Rm 71A 650-725-2933
Tom Sheehan
Brent Sockness
Lee H. Yearley