The field of religious thought addresses theological and philosophical reflection in religious texts and contexts. Modes of analysis include intellectual history, critical engagement, and comparative work. The faculty at Harvard has particular strength in Christian thought but can also support theological or philosophical doctoral projects in other religious traditions, including Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic thought.
Recent and current dissertation topics include:
- The Ladder of Thorns: Søren Kierkegaard on the Varieties of Suffering
- The Doctrine of the Soul’s Immortality in Sixteenth-Century German Lutheran Theology
- Perceiving Splendor: The “Doctrine of the Spiritual Senses” in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics
- Leaning over the Abyss: Raissa Maritain (1883-1960) and the French Catholic Revival
- Cosmic Theodicy: Origen on the Problem of Evil
- The Humanity of Christ in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics
- Hume and Hope: A Study in David Hume’s Philosophy of Religion
- The Workshop of Being: A Comparative Study of Jonathan Edwards and William James
- Between Irony and Witness: Kierkegaard’s Poetics of Faith, Hope and Love
- Veiled and Unveiled Others: Revisiting Karl Barth’s Gender Trouble
- THOU ART On Representation of the Word and the Incarnation of the Human Subject: A Christological Aesthetics
- The Subject of Emancipation: Critique, Reason and Religion in the Thought of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Paul Tillich
- The Frail Agony of Grace: Story, Act, and Sacrament in the Fiction of Cormac McCarthy
Affiliated Faculty
Francis X. Clooney
Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology
James Engell
Gurney Professor of English Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus
Janet Gyatso
Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies
Amy Hollywood
Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies
Francis Schüssler Fiorenza
Charles Chauncey Stillman Research Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies