Robert A. Rees

Robert A. “Bob” Rees, Ph.D.

Until his retirement in 2022, Bob Rees was Visiting Professor and Director of Mormon/Latter-day Saint Studies at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. In addition to his work at GTU, Bob has taught at the University of Wisconsin, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, and as a Fulbright professor of American Studies at Vytautaus Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. He has also served as Assistant Dean of Fine Arts and Director of Continuing Education in the Arts and Humanities at UCLA, where he was also Director of Studies for the UCLA Cambridge Program and the UCLA Royal College of Arts and Royal College of Music Programs in London. In the 1980s, he facilitated the first formal exchanges between distinguished writers from China and the United States.

Rees has taught 35 different courses in higher education and has published widely in the arts, humanities, education, and religious studies. His poetry has been published in a number of journals and magazines and collected in Waiting for Morning (2018).

As a scholar, Rees has given several hundred presentations at conferences and symposia and appeared on various blogs and podcasts. He has published numerous scholarly articles, essays, and books as well as forwards, introductions, and reviews. His most recent publications include Imagining and Reimagining the Restoration (2025), Making Space for Mormon Thought and Culture: The Enduring Influence of Eugene England, co-edited with Brent Rushforth (2025). Why I Stay2: The Challenge of Discipleship for Contemporary Latter-day Saints (2021), and A New Witness to the World: Reading and Re-reading the Book of Mormon (2020). Selected earlier publications include Fifteen American Authors Before 1900: Bibliographic Essays on Research and Criticism (1984); Guide to the American Short Story (1982), Washington Irving's The Aventuras of Captain Bonneville (1977).

As a commentator, Bob’s opinion pieces have appeared in the Huffington Post, Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, East Bay Times, Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News, and elsewhere.

In relation to film, video and theatrical writing, Bob was the producer of "The Golden Angel Over the City," a documentary for Lithuanian State Television (1996); the producer, director, and co-writer, "Spires to the Sun: Sabatino Rodia's Towers in Watts" a documentary film sponsored by the California Council for the Humanities and shown on PBS station KCET(1992) and also shown on TELE-3, Vilnius, Lithuania (1993}; executive producer, "I Hear Tell: Storytelling in American Cultures," a documentary funded through the planning and script development phases by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Bob is author of a screenplay on Deitrich Bonhoeffer and two musicals about the American Renaissance, ”American Dreams” and “Clarissa’s Dream.”