The new emerging field of contemplative studies – and the a further conversation on defining and understanding spirituality today
Prof. Harold Roth is a professor or Religious Studies and East Asian Studies at Brown University in Providence RI and is a pioneer in the academic field of Contemplative Studies. At Brown, he is also the Director of the Contemplative Studies Initiative, the first university concentration program in this new and emerging field that now has curricular departments and programs at other universities including Emory, the Universities of Virginia and Michigan, Rice, NYU and others. Prof Roth is a specialist in Classical Chinese religion, philosophy and classical Taoism. He has written and published extensively in many academic journals in the US and overseas. He holds degrees from Princeton and McMaster Universities and a doctorate from the University of Toronto. He is currently working o a volume that details and outlines the theory and practice of what he calls Integrative Contemplative Pedagogy.