Brian C. Wilson

Brian C. Wilson is Professor of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan. A native of Santa Clara, California, he earned a B.S. in Medical Microbiology from Stanford University (1982), and, after three years in the Peace Corps (Honduras, Dominican Republic), went on to earn an M.A. in Spanish from the Monterey Institute of International Studies (1990) and an M.A. (1991) and Ph.D. (1996) in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor Wilson joined the faculty of the WMU Department of Comparative Religion in 1996 and was its chair from 2001 to 2009. His areas of interest include American religious history with an emphasis on new religious movements and spiritual biography. Among his books, Wilson is the author of Yankees in Michigan (Michigan State University Press, 2008); Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Religion of Biologic Living (Indiana University Press, 2014), winner of the 2015 Historical Society of Michigan State History Award; and John E. Fetzer and the Quest for the New Age (Wayne State University Press, 2018), winner of the 2019 Eric Hoffer Book Award (Spiritual Category) and the 2019 Historical Society of Michigan State History Award. His latest book, The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson (University of Massachusetts Press, 2022) is available now. Wilson is currently working on a biography of the renowned American Spiritualist missionary, Dr. James M. Peebles (1822-1922).