Mark Sydney Cladis

Background

Mark Sydney Cladis was born on May 20, 1958, in Palo Alto, California, United States. He was the son of John B. and Genevieve I. Cladis. His father was a physicist. Mark's mother was a department manager.

Education

As a child and young teenager, Mark Cladis didn’t enjoy school. In high school, he tried to avoid reading and writing. But everything changed in college when he took what was supposed to have been an easy “general ed” course requirement. On the reading list was The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, the famous American psychologist, and philosopher. It was through that text Cladis fell in love - with James, yes, but also with books, with thoughtful questions and compelling arguments, with the University and the humanities, and with a world where people devoted their lives to exploring the messy and ambiguous tangles of experience. About halfway through his freshman year, he took a walk with an “older woman” - Alice Bartle, a senior majoring in Drama. As they circled the campus lagoon at sunset, she asked, “Mark, what are your plans for later on?” He was glad she asked. “I’m going to change my major from physics to religious studies, and then, after four years of philosophy and religion at UCSB, I’m going to divinity school for three years for a master’s degree, learning from people who actually believe in religion. After that, I’ll get my Ph.D. at a secular university and bring together the theological and the secular.” Alice laughed. “I was asking about your dinner plans.”

Yet the plan he had laid out for Alice Bartle was the path he took, borne along by love, by a desire to read and write, to ponder and wonder - and to mature in these endeavors.

In 1980 Mark Cladis studied at the University of California in Santa Barbara, where he earned a bachelor's degree. In 1983 Mark Cladis earned a Master of Divinity at Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1985 Mark Cladis studied at Princeton University and gained a Master of Arts. In 1988 Mark earned a Doctor of Philosophy.

Career

Mark Cladis worked as a visiting instructor at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. From 1988 till 1990 Mark Cladis worked as a visiting assistant professor of religious studies and philosophy at Stanford University in Stanford, California. From 1990 till 1995 Mark Cladis was an assistant professor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. From 1995 till 2002 Mark Cladis worked as an associate professor of religion and chairperson of the department. From 2002 till 2004 Mark was a professor at the Department of Religion at Vassar College. From 2004 till present he has been a professor on the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University. From 2005 till 2008 Mark Cladis worked as a Chair on the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University. From 2011 till present Cladis has been The Brooke Russell Astor Professor of Humanities at Brown University. From 2012 till 2013 Mark Cladis worked as a Chair on the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University. From 2015 till present Mark Cladis worked as a Chair on the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University.

Mark Cladis is a contributor to periodicals, including Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Journal of Religious Ethics, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Journal of the History of Ideas, and Journal of Religion.

Mark Cladis' main fields of inquiry are the philosophy of religion, religious ethics, and theory of religion (including the integration of these three subfields). His work often pertains to the intersection of modern Western religious, political, and environmental thought, and it is as likely to engage poetry and literature as it is philosophy and critical theory. Among other things, this work entails attention to environmental justice and indigenous ecology. Du Bois has become central to his research on radical aesthetics (aesthetics dedicated to social justice).

Mark Cladis is the author of Public Vision, Private Lives (Oxford University Press, 2003; paperback edition, Columbia University Press, 2006) and A Communitarian Defense of Liberalism (Stanford University Press, 1992), and over sixty articles and chapters in edited books.

Mark Cladis is the editor of Emile Durkheim's Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (Oxford University Press, 2001) and of Education and Punishment: Durkheim and Foucault (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2001). He has recently completed the book, In Search of a Course: Reflections on Education and the Culture of the Modern Research University. Mark Cladis is currently working on the book project, Radical Romanticism: Religion, Democracy, and the Environmental Imagination.

Achievements

• Mark Cladis researched the intersection of modern Western religious, political, and environmental thought. Among other things, his works entailed attention to environmental justice and indigenous ecology. So Mark enlightened these issues a lot.
  
  In 2003 Mark Cladis was nominated for the National Endowments for the Humanities Summer Fellowship. In 2005 Cladis was nominated for a Carnegie Scholar. In 2005 he got Wriston Course Development Grant and Wayland Collegium Course Development Grant at Brown University. In 2011 Mark Cladis was nominated for National Endowments for the Humanities Summer Fellowship. In 2011 Mark Cladis gained First-Year Seminar Development Grant at Brown University. In 2015 Mark earned fellowship from The Cogut Center for the Humanities.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

    (In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Emile D...)

    2001
  • Public Vision, Private Lives: Rousseau, Religion, and 21st-Century Democracy

    (Mark S. Cladis pinpoints the origins of contemporary noti...)

    2003
  • A Communitarian Defense of Liberalism: Emile Durkheim and Contemporary Social Theory 1992
  • Durkheim and Foucault: Perspectives in Education and Punishment 2001

Politics

The idea of progressivism is extremely close to Mark Cladis' ideology.

Views

Quotations: "My work has been influenced by Charles Dickens, Zora Neale Hurston, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Simone Weil - and also by the landscape of the Hudson River Valley. I write to learn about myself, my community, and the land. I invite others to ‘listen in.’ I wrote my most recent essay during a pause in the middle of working on a thorny problem in political philosophy. I was trying to figure out why the eighteenth-century philosopher, Rousseau, insisted on using a religious vocabulary even while articulating his most secular projects. I needed a break, I looked up, and there were my chickens. A week later the essay was completed: ‘On the Importance of Owning Chickens: Lessons in Nature, Community, and Transformation.’ How do I work? Every morning, with coffee, and with chickens nearby - just in case."

Membership

Mark Cladis is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the British Centre for Durkheimian Studie, the Association for the Sociology of Religion, the New Haven Theological Reading Group. Mark Cladis is also a member of the Environmental Studies Colloquium, Vassar College, the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, the American Society for the Study of Religion (ASSR).

Mark Cladis is a founding member of Environmental Humanities at Brown (EHAB) and is an active faculty member in Native American and Indigenous Studies at Brown. He is also a member of the Political Theory Project.

• member

  Environmental Humanities , United States

• member

  Native American and Indigenous Studies , United States

• member

  Political Theory Project , United States

• member

  American Academy of Religion , United States

  1986 - present

• member

  Society for the Scientific Study of Religion , United States

  1993 - present

• member

  British Centre for Durkheimian Studie , United States

  1994 - present

• member

  New Haven Theological Reading Group , United States

  1995 - present

• member

  Environmental Studies Colloquium, Vassar College , United States

  1996 - 2004

• member

  Association for the Study of Literature and Environment , United States

  2000 - present

• member

  American Society for the Study of Religion , United States

  2004 - present

Personality

Mark Cladis is a quite intended and serious person. He is intelligent and does things consciously and with love.

Interests

• civil rights, environmental issues, ethics, indigenous ecology, religion, political theory, romanticism

• Writers

  Charles Dickens, Zora Neale Hurston, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Simone Weil

Connections

Father:

John B. Cladis

Mother:

Genevieve I. Cladis

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, TV, & Other Fields
  2010