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He will speak about Pithoro, god of the Rathwa people of India, and the globalization of religious studies
Gregory D. Alles, professor and chair of the department of philosophy and religious studies at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md., and past president of the North American Association for the Study of Religion, will pay a visit to campus on Tuesday, April 8th. His visit is sponsored by the department of religious studies through the Lyman Coleman Fund.
Alles will present a Brown Bag lecture on Pithoro, the god of the Rathwa people of India, titled “Pithoro: A Well-known Unknown God,” 12:15 p.m. in Skillman Library’s Gendebien Room.
Following this, he will deliver a public guest lecture titled “Toward a Global Vision of Religious Studies” at 7:30 p.m. in Hugel Hall, room. 103. This lecture is based upon a recent book he edited, entitled Religious Studies: A Global View (London, Routledge, 2007).
For information about Alles’ visit, please email or call (x 5181) Eric Ziolkowski, Dana Professor and Department Head of Religious Studies.
In addition to many articles, Alles is the author of The Iliad, the Ramayana, and the Work of Religion: Failed Persuasion and Religious Mystification (Penn State Press, 1994) and Rudolf Otto (forthcoming), as well as the editor of Religious Studies: A Global View (2007), works by Rudolf Otto and Joachim Wach, and Encyclopedia of World Religions (2d ed., 2006) with Robert Ellwood.
His current interests include the application of cognitive science and economic theory to religion, religions of tribal people in India, especially the Rathvas of eastern Gujarat, and their oral literatures, and the globalization of religious studies. The recipient of Fulbright and NEH fellowships, he has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Munich and is past president of the North American Association for the Study of Religion.