Emeriti
Lee Siegel
Professor (2016)
Ph.D., Oxford University, 1975
Lee Siegel’s publications, dealing particularly with the aesthetic, erotic, and comedic dimensions of religious experience, are experimental narrative explorations of the possible relationships between scholarship and fiction. He teaches an undergraduate introduction to religion, a graduate seminar on Indian religious literature, and he directs graduate workshops devoted to both rhetorical and pedagogical methodologies in religious studies. In both his research and teaching endeavors at the graduate level, he is also concerned with the development of a poetics for the translation of Sanskrit literary and religious texts.
Poul Andersen
Associate Professor (2013)
Ph.D., University of Copenhagen, 1991
Poul Andersen is a specialist in Chinese religions, with a focus on Daoist ritual and the theory of ritual. He has explored these topics, both based on fieldwork among Daoist priests in southern Taiwan and through research into historical texts from all periods. As a participant in the European Daozang Project (1979–84), he worked extensively on the Daoist ritual traditions of the Song dynasty (960–1278). A more recent focus has been Daoist iconography, especially from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) to the present day. Professor Andersen is the Director of the Daoist Iconography Project (DIP), an international web-based collaborative research project which he initiated at the Department of Religion in partnership with the Honolulu Museum of Art. His most recent book, The Paradox of Being: Truth, Identity, and Images in Daoism (Harvard University Asia Center, 2019), brings together the results of his earlier research in a wide-ranging philosophical reflection on Daoism and Western philosophies of existence.
John Charlot
Emeritus Professor (2013)
Dr.Theol., University of Munich, 1968
Personal website
Jean Charlot Foundation
John Charlot taught Hawaiian and Polynesian religions as well as New Testament and Religion and Art.
Mitsuo Aoki (1914–2010)
DD, Pacific School of Religion (1968)
Dr. Aoki founded the Department of Religion in 1956. He earned a B.A. degree from Drury University in Springfield, MO, and a B.D. from Chicago Theological Seminary, before receiving his Doctor of Divinity degree from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA. Some of his numerous contributions to the field of death and dying, and to hospice care, are described on the living your dying DVD.
Alfred Bloom (1926-2017)
Ph.D., Harvard University (1963)
David W. Chappell (1940–2004)
Ph.D., Yale University
S. Cromwell Crawford
Th.D., Pacific School of Religion (1965)
Michael R. Saso
Ph.D., London University (1971)
Friedrich Seifert
Th.D., Pacific School of Religion (1967)
George J. Tanabe, Jr.
Ph.D., Columbia University (1983)
On January 24, 2014, George J. Tanabe, Jr. was awarded Japan’s Imperial Order of the Rising Sun. This honor comes in recognition of his contributions to the strengthening of academic and cultural exchanges between the United States and Japan, and also recognizes his outstanding research in the field of Japanese religions.