Todd Lewis:  

Life My early life was shaped by the Methodist Church, engagement with many sports (baseball, football, track/field, golf, tennis) some of which I had some talent in, as well as by excelling academically in school. I was also an avid sailor, and owned three different catamarans that I sailed in Biscayne Bay until I returned from college. I was swept through high school trying to be a top student and athlete, but when a series of serious injuries hit me in the last year of football, I went to college and faced life for the first time since the age of 9 free from football. Although I almost accepted an invitation to walk on there, I didn't and never looked back. When I departed South Florida in 1970 for college at Rutgers, the arc of my education and career, in retrospect, follows the logic of my seeking out new and more challenging cultural frontiers. What began with jettisoning my Southern accent led to learning four South Asian languages; my vague interest in psychology and religion entering college culminated with doctoral studies focusing on the religions of India. The cultural experience of living in New York City and graduate studies at Columbia University prepared me in three scholarly fields: philological training in reading texts in Sanskrit, Pali, Nepali and Newari; studies in the history of civilization in South Asia; investigations in anthropological theory, including training in ethnographic field work. When deciding on a topic for doctoral study, I specifically sought the challenge of researching the least known Buddhist tradition in the world. So I became one of the first Western scholars to do fieldwork on the extraordinarily complex culture of Newar Buddhism in Kathmandu, Nepal, and pursued an academic career. From the Holy Cross Web Page: Todd Lewis has taught at the College of the Holy Cross since 1990. In 1996, he was promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and in 2003 was promoted to the rank of Professor. His previous academic positions were at Montclair State University (1989-1990), Rutgers University (1988-89), Carleton College (1988), Columbia University (1983-1987), and the University of California, Berkeley (1983). He is also a Research Associate in the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Harvard University. Professor Lewis teaches courses on World religions, as well as courses on comparative religion and modernization. Most of his world religions courses are on the Asian traditions and his seminars treat various schools of Buddhism, his area of research expertise. He has also developed courses on Gardens in Asian Spirituality and Ecology and Religion. As a researcher, Professor Lewis is one of the world's leading authorities on the religions of the mid-montaine Himalayan region and the social history of Buddhism. His special research focus for over twenty-five years has been Buddhism in the Kathmandu Val...Expand for more