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Diana L. Eck

Portrait of Diana L.  Eck

Diana L. Eck (b. 1945, Tacoma, Washington, USA) is a scholar of religious studies, a professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at Harvard Universty since 1976- where she co-founded and heads the Pluralism Project -, and with partner Dorothy Evans the first same-sex couple having been appointed faculty deans of Lowell House, Cambridge.

Raised as a Christian Methodist in Montana, she started to travel through India as a researcher from the 1980s, ​“driven by the sheer curiosity of a scholar who knew something of the vast textual resources in Sanskrit and Hindi on the places of Hindu pilgrimage and wondered what these places were like today.” Her mother, Dorothy Eck, a Montana State Senator for twenty years and the president of the Montana League of Women Voters, has been a constant source of inspiration and encouragement.

Publications

  • J. Krishnamurti: the pathless way. New York, International Center for Integrative Studies, 1968. OCLC 6733472. (14 pages)
  • Banaras: City of Light. New York, Knopf, 1982. ISBN 9780710202369. 2nd ed: 1999, New York, Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231114479. 3d ed.: 2000, Penguin Random House India. ISBN ‎ 978 – 0143431336.
  • “Gangā: The Goddess in Hindu Sacred Geography” in The Divine Consort: Radha and the Goddesses of India, Hawley and Wulff, 1982.
  • The Manyness of God, Canton — New York, St. Lawrence University, 1987. OCLC 25126361. (Kathryn Fraser Mackay lecture, 1985, 16 pages).
  • [ed. with Devaki Jain] Speaking of faith: cross-cultural perspectives on women, religion, and social change, London, Women’s Press, 1987. ISBN 9780704340169.
  • [ed. with Françoise Mallison] Devotion divine: Bhakti traditions from the regions of India: studies in honour of Charlotte Vaudeville. Groningen, Netherlands: Egbert Forsten Publishing, 1991. ISBN 9789069800455.
  • Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras, Boston, Beacon Press,1993; 2nd ed. 2003. ISBN 9780807073018.
  • On Common Ground: World Religions in America, New York, Columbia University Press — The Pluralism Project CD Rom, 1997, 2nd ed. 2002. ISBN 9780231126649.
  • Darśan: seeing the divine image in India, New York, Columbia University Press, 1998. ISBN 9780231112659.
  • “The Imagined Landscape: Patterns in the Construction of Hindu Sacred Geography” in Tradition, Pluralism, and Identity: In Honour of T. N. Madan, Delhi, Das, 1999.
  • A New Religious America: how a ​“Christian country” has now become the world’s most religiously diverse nation, San Francisco, Harper SanFrancisco, 2001. ISBN 9780060621599.
  • [ed. with Marla Schrader] Jean Zaru, Occupied with Nonviolence: A Palestinian Woman Speaks, Fortress Press, 2008. 
  • India: A Sacred Geography, New York, Harmony/​Rodale/​Convergent, 2012. ISBN 9780385531917.
  • [ed. with Rahul Mehrotra, Felipe Vera, photos by Iwan Baan and 3 more] Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral Mega City, Hatje Cantz, 2015.
  • [ed. with Elinor Pierce] Pluralism in Practice: Case Studies of Leadership in a Religiously Diverse America, New York, Orbis Press, 2023. ISBN 978 – 1626985483.

also: Pilgrimage, Place, and Pluralism: Essays in Conversation with Diana Eck, Jennifer Peace and Elinor Pierce eds., New York, Red Elixir, 2024, 276 p.