Faculty

Diana L. Eck

Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Member of the Faculty of Divinity

Diana Eck's academic work has a dual focus—India and America—and in both cases she is interested in the challenges of religious pluralism in a multi-religious society. Her work on India includes the books Banaras: City of Light and Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. She is currently working on a book entitled India: Myth on Earth. Since 1991, she has headed the Pluralism Project, which now includes a network of some 60 affiliates exploring the religious dimensions of America's new immigration; the growth of Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, and Zoroastrian communities in the United States; and the issues of religious pluralism and American civil society. The Pluralism Project's award-winning CD-ROM, On Common Ground: World Religions in America, was published in 1997; her book A New Religious America: How A "Christian Country" Has Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation was published in 2001. Her book Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey From Bozeman to Banaras is in the area of Christian theology and interfaith dialogue. It won the Grawemeyer Book Award in 1995 and was published in a new 10th-anniversary edition in 2003. Professor Eck has worked closely with churches, including her own United Methodist Church and the World Council of Churches, on questions of interreligious relations and dialogue. She received the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton and the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1996, the Montana Governor's Humanities Award in 2003, and the Melcher Lifetime Achievement Award from the Unitarian Universalist Association in 2003. In addition to her teaching duties, Professor Eck also served as acting director of the Center for the Study of World Religions during the academic year 2003-04.