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University of Delaware Press has published Literature, Religion, and East/West Comparison: Essays in Honor of Anthony C. Yu, a book edited by Eric Ziolkowski, Charles A. Dana Professor and head of religious studies.
The book pays critical homage to the eminent comparatist of Chinese and Western literature and religion and University of Chicago professor named in the subtitle. It sheds new light upon the important, yet previously ignored, overlappings of the relations between literature and religion with those between Eastern and Western literatures. Ziolkowski’s introductory essay summarizes the historical development of the scholarly disciplines associated with these two areas, paying special attention to the seminal and representative contributions made to both by Yu.
Broadly comparative, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary in scope, the book has 13 essays written by American and Chinese scholars of religion and Chinese literature on themes such as literary texts and traditions of varying provenance and periods, ranging from ancient Greece, medieval Europe, and 19th- and 20th-century England and America to China from the classical to modern periods. Their topics range from contesting history and identity in modern fiction about Moses to the “double desire” in a Ming novella, from Thomas Merton’s pilgrimage and Orientalism to craft analogies in Chinese and Greek argumentation. The disciplines and areas of research that they draw into constructive engagement with one another include comparative literature, religion and literature, history of religions (or comparative religion), religion and social thought, and the study of myth.
Author of two books, The Sanctification of Don Quixote: From Hidalgo to Priest and Evil Children in Religion, Literature, and Art, Ziolkowski previously edited A Museum of Faiths: Histories and Legacies of the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions for the American Academy of Religion’s Classics in Religion series.
He has been profiled in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers, International Authors and Writers Who’s Who, Marquis Who’s Who in the East, The Writers Directory, and Contemporary Authors.
Ziolkowski has served as a mentor for many Lafayette students in their senior honors theses and independent research projects. Ten were approved to present their work at the annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research, including Amy Levinson ’05 (Orinda, Calif.), a double major in anthropology & sociology and religious studies, who spoke this April at the conference on “Friend or Foe of Death? A Comparative Analysis of Jewish and Buddhist Views on Aging.”
He has published more than 80 articles, essays, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and reviews. He has organized sessions and shared his research at many conferences, including the International Congress of Religious Studies, Melbourne, Australia; the international meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Krakow, Poland; the International Symposium on Kierkegaard as a Religious Thinker; national and regional meetings of the American Academy of Religion; and international conferences hosted by the Society for Literature and Religion, Westminster College, Oxford, England, the Centre for the Study of Literature and Theology, St. Chad’s College, Durham, England, and the Centre for the Study of Literature and Theology, University of Glasgow, Scotland.
Ziolkowski serves as North America general editor for Literature and Theology: An International Journal of Religion, Theory and Culture, published by Oxford University Press; main editor of the “History of Reception of the Bible” for De Gruyter’s International Encyclopedia of the Bible; and a member of the board of consultants for The Journal of Religion. He served as a consultant for Encyclopedia of Religion, published this year by Macmillan Reference USA.
He also evaluates manuscripts and prospectuses for several publishers and for two journals in his field. He was Religion and Literature section head of the mid-Atlantic branch of the American Academy of Religion from 1990-96.
Ziolkowski has received many honors in his career, including election as a Life Fellow in the Society for the Arts, Religion, and Culture and selection as a speaker for the Rabbi Moses Margolis Memorial Endowment Lecture at the University of Binghamton. He is the recipient of several fellowships and earned Lafayette’s Mary Louise Van Artsdalen Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Achievement in 2004-05, Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Award for Superior Teaching and Excellence of Scholarship in 1997-1998, and Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Lecture Award in 1991-92
In addition to serving on many Lafayette committees, including the search committee that resulted in the selection of Daniel Weiss as Lafayette’s next president, he was a member of the Northampton County Advisory Council to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission from 1990–98.
He received a doctorate in religion and literature with distinction and a master’s in divinity from University of Chicago Divinity School in 1987 and 1981, respectively. He graduated with a bachelor of arts and highest distinction in religion from Dartmouth College in 1980.
Ziolkowski joined the Lafayette faculty as a one-year visiting assistant professor in 1988, rising to assistant professor in 1989, associate professor in 1994, and full professor in 2000 before taking the Charles A. Dana professorship in 2004.