Associate Professor and Chair,

Department of 
Religious Studies

Office:  N-418
Phone:  773-298-3027
Email:   bathgate@sxu.edu
Fax:      779-9061

Ph.D. University of Chicago

Prof. Bathgate teaches courses in the comparative study of religion, including: 

• RELST 240:  Studies in Comparative Religion - The Religious Other

• RELST 241:  The Hindu Tradition

• RELST 242:  The Buddhist Tradition

• RELST 244:  Religious Traditions of East Asia

• RELST 249:  The Islamic Tradition

• RELST 355:  Seminar in Comparative Religions

His research addresses the forms and functions of popular religious literature in pre-modern Japan.  He is the author of The Fox’s Craft in Japanese Religion and Folklore: Shapeshifters, Transformations and Duplicities, as well as articles on Pure Land sacred biography and the literature of pilgrimage.  He is currently at work on several research projects including the narrative logics of religious anecdote, the implications of the Golden Rule for medieval ecology, and the imagery of karma in accounts of religious exchange.

Click here for a current Curriculum Vitae.