Faculty/Staff Richard Foltz
Ph.D. (Harvard)
Richard Foltz is an historian of comparative religious traditions, with a special focus on the Iranian world. His books Religions of the Silk Road: Premodern Patterns of Globalization (revised 2nd edition, Palgrave, 2009) and L'Iran creuset de religions (Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2007) propose historical models for considering the emergence, development and transmission of the world’s major religious traditions. He has also been active in helping shape a new subfield combining religious studies with environmental ethics, often referred to as “Religion and Ecology”, having edited a popular course text titled Worldviews, Religion and the Environment: A Global Anthology (Wadsworth Thomson, 2002) and two seminal volumes exploring environmental values among Muslims, Islam and Ecology: A Bestowed Trust (Harvard, 2003) and Environmentalism in the Muslim World (Nova Science, 2005). His book Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures (Oneworld, 2006) is the first scholarly survey of how Muslims have viewed the importance of non-human animals. Dr. Foltz’s most recent journal articles are “Iranian Zoroastrians in Canada: Balancing Religious and cultural Identities" in Iranian Studies 42/3 (2009) and "Zoroastrianism in Iran: What Future in the Homeland?" in Analytica Iranica 1/1 (2009). In all Dr. Foltz has authored or edited eight books and some seventy journal articles and other scholarly publications. His work has appeared in French, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Japanese, Indonesian, Spanish, German, and Bosnian.
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