Stuart Ray Sarbacker

Stuart Ray Sarbacker is a Professor of the Comparative Study of Religion with a focus on Indic religion and philosophy at Oregon State University. His work is centered on the relationships between the religious and philosophical traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, especially with respect to the practices of yoga and tantra (both bodily disciplines and contemplative practices). He also works on issues related to method and theory in the study of religion, with a particular focus on religious experience and its interpretation. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has performed institutional study and fieldwork in India, Nepal, and Japan. Before coming to Oregon State University, he served as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Religion at Northwestern University, where he received the Weinberg College of Liberal Arts Alumni Teaching Award for his distinguished teaching of undergraduate students.

At Oregon State, Professor Sarbacker was awarded the Bill and Caroline Wilkins Faculty Development Award in support of his innovative teaching and research, and he has served as a Fellow of both the Center for the Humanities and the Spring Creek Project. His research and teaching has been supported by the Hundere Endowment for Religion and Culture and by the Horning Endowment for the Humanities and Sciences. He recently participated in a 3-year Luce Foundation funded program on religion and technology administered by the Institute for Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California. His project focused on the ways in which the philosophical and ethical issues associated with self-transformation in Indian contemplative traditions mirror those arising from emergent technologies of human augmentation.

His teaching focuses on topical issues in Comparative Religion and Indian Philosophy, along with broad introductory courses on World Religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. He offers a range of courses on the religions, philosophies, and cultures of South Asia, and on topics relating to spirituality and ecology and religion and technology. In many of his courses, Sarbacker utilizes innovative contemplative pedagogies that aim at bridging the gaps between academic study, self-reflection, and engagement in civic life.

Professor Sarbacker has worked with a variety of students on graduate-level research, including in Applied Ethics, Environmental Humanities, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. He has also served as a member of the Alternative Masculinities Seminar sponsored by the Center for the Humanities at Oregon State.

He is a co-founder and former co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Yoga in Theory and Practice section, and has also served as the co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Mysticism section.

In addition to his academic credentials, Professor Sarbacker is an active yoga practitioner and teacher, having trained in contemporary yoga and meditation traditions in India, Japan, and the United States.