I am the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Religion, Politics, and Ethics at the University of Chicago. My work explores how religious thought and practice aim to guide human conduct in personal life and public affairs. I also examine the social contexts and assumptions that organize the study of religion and religious ethics, meta-critically. Given the breadth of possibilities made available by the study of religion, ethics, and politics, my work does not focus on a single problem, theme, text, author, period, or topic. I am rather drawn to a number of different issues and overlapping domains of inquiry that enlist a range of theoretical vocabularies. Specific topics include the ethics of war and peace, practical reasoning in ethics, bioethics, multiculturalism, theories of justice, comparison in religious ethics, ethics and cultural studies, and human rights. I examine these issues in historically informed, critical, and comparative ways. Regardless of the topic, the main aim of all of my work is to advance an understanding of the ethical dimensions of human thought and experience, and to clarify the intellectual landscape on which the study of religion, politics, and ethics can proceed.
I decided to create this website as a way of sharing information and work with interested scholars and students, and to invite input from which I can benefit and pass along to friends and colleagues. Thanks for your interest and for visiting this site.
