John Stratton Hawley—informally Jack—is the Claire Tow Professor of Religion Emeritus at Barnard College, Columbia University. He has written or edited more than a score of books on Hinduism and the comparative study of religion. The most recent include Krishna’s Playground: Vrindavan in the 21st Century (Oxford, 2020); an expanded version of Surdas: Poet, Singer, Saint (Primus, 2018); A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement (Harvard, 2015); Sur’s Ocean (with Kenneth Bryant, Harvard, 2015); and a poem-by-poem commentary called Into Sur’s Ocean (Harvard Oriental Series, 2016). Two books are on the drawing table: God’s Vacation: Religious Retreat in a Godforsaken Age and Beautifully Blind: Surdas Paintings from Udaipur.
Jack Hawley has directed Columbia University’s South Asia Institute and has received multiple awards from NEH, the Smithsonian, and the AIIS. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He can be reached via email at jsh3@columbia.edu.
John Stratton Hawley 