Religious Studies and Ethics Department
Eric Mortensen
John A. Von Weissenfluh Professor of Religious Studies
Office
Dana Auditorium-212
+1 (336) 3162357
emortens@guilford.edu
Biography
Some of Eric's academic fields of expertise include folklore of Gyalthang; Tibetan & Himalayan, and East Asian religions and folklore; Yunnan and the minorities of Southwest China; animals in religion; religion and ecology; divination; theory of comparative religion; Buddhism; Shamanism; Indigenous religious traditions; the Mongol Empire; ethnographic fieldwork praxis; science and religion; monsters and magic in folk religions; intersectional liberative systems; outdoor pedagogy; and storytelling and oral traditions.
Education
Harvard, Ph.D., 2003
Carleton College, Bachelor of Art, 1993
Selected Scholarship
“Of Monsters & Invisible Villages: Nags myi rgod Tales of the Tibetans of Gyalthang,” in Joseph Laycock and Natasha Mikles, eds. Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous: Gods and Monsters. New York: Lexington. 2021. pp. 97-115.
“Wrestling with Angels and Heavy Books,” in Emily D. Crews and Russell T. McCutcheon, eds. Remembering J.Z. Smith: A Career and its Consequence. Sheffield, UK: Equinox. November 2020. pp. 57-62. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/remembering-jz-smith/
“Boundaries of the Borderlands: Mapping Gyalthang,” in Stéphane Gros, eds. Frontier Tibet: Patterns of Change in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 2019. pp. 115-139.
“Prosperity, Identity, Intra-Tibetan Violence, and Harmony in Southwest China: The Case of Gyalthang,” in Ben Hillman and Gray Tuttle, eds. Ethnic Dynamics in Western China. New York: Columbia University Press. 2016. pp. 201-222.
“Mosuo and Naxi Nationalities,” Encyclopedia of Modern China. Volume 2. Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 2009. pp. 613-614.