Faculty
Donald K. Swearer
Distinguished Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions
- BA, Princeton University
- BD, STM, Yale University Divinity School
- MA, PhD, Princeton University
- To contact, please refer to:
- HDS Faculty Directory
Donald Swearer was appointed as director of the Center for the Study of World Religions and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies in 2004. He came to HDS from Swarthmore College where he had taught since 1970, most recently as the Charles and Harriet Cox McDowell Professor of Religion. Previously, he was in the Department of Religion at Oberlin College and has held several visiting professorships, including the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the University of Hawaii where in 1993 he was the Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies. In 2000-01 he served as Hershey Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at the Divinity School. Professor Swearer has received numerous research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Program, and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. He is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Association for Asian Studies, the American Society for the Study of Religion, and the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. He has held a variety of editorial posts for several academic journals, including the Journal of Asian Studies, the Journal of Religious Ethics, and Religious Studies Review. His recent books include Becoming the Buddha: The Ritual of Image Consecration in Thailand (2004), Sacred Mountains of Northern Thailand and Their Legends (2004), The Legend of Queen Cama (1998), and The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia (1995).