Matthew Kapstein
Numata Visiting Professor of the Philosophy of Religions and the History of Religions in the Divinity School
Ph.D. (Brown University)
Matthew Kapstein has worked primarily on the philosophical traditions of later Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, and on the relationship of these with the practical and experiential aspects of religious life, including art, ritual, meditation, and yoga. He has published a collaborative volume, Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity; a study of the transformation of religious ideas, The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation and Memory; a book devoted to Buddhist philosophy, Reason’s Traces: Identity and Interpretation in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Thought; and edited a volume devoted to the comparative study of religious experience, The Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience (University of Chicago Press, 2004). His recent works include The Tibetans (Blackwell, 2006), an introduction to the cultural and political history of Tibet, two edited volumes -- Contributions to the Cultural History of Early Tibet (Brill, 2007) and Buddhism Between Tibet and China (Wisdom, 2009) -- and a translation of an eleventh century Sanskrit allegory, The Rise of Wisdom Moon (Clay Sanskrit Library, 2009). Professor Kapstein is also directeur d’études in the division of religious studies of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris.
