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Chicago, IL 60637

Tel: (773) 702-8266
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edu/~mkapstei/

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Matthew Kapstein

Numata Visiting Professor of the Philosophy of Religion 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 most recent works are The Tibetans (Blackwell, 2006), an introduction to the cultural and political history of Tibet, and an edited volume, Contributions to the Cultural History of Early Tibet (Brill, 2007). Professor Kapstein is also directeur d’études in the division of religious studies of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris.