Diana Eck

Diana Eck

Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society
Diana Eck

BA, Smith College
MA, University of London
Postgraduate Diploma, Banaras Hindu University
PhD, Harvard University

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. Her new book, published in April, is 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 is currently Co-Chair of the Interfaith Relations Commission of the National Council of Churches. 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. At Harvard University Diana has served several years as Chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion since 1977 and as Chair of the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies as it made the transition to the Department of South Asian Studies in 2010. She is also a member of the Faculty of Divinity. In 2012, Diana was named to a Harvard College Professorship in recognition of excellence in undergraduate teaching. Diana Eck and Dorothy Austin are also Masters of Lowell House at Harvard University.

Professor Eck is currently teaching.

Contact Information

Barker Center 307
12 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
p: 617-495-2099
Office Hours: By Appointment

Methodologies and Approaches