Dr. Richard Foltz, Professor and Director of the Centre for Iranian Studies
A historian of comparative religious traditions, Richard Foltz is the founding director of Concordia’s Centre for Iranian Studies Program. His books, Religions of the Silk Road: Pre-modern Patterns of Globalization and L’Iran creuset de religions propose historical models for considering the emergence, development and transmission of the world’s major religious traditions, emphasizing the contributions of Iranian civilization to world history.
Dr. Foltz has authored or edited eight books and over one hundred articles and other scholarly publications. His work has appeared in more than a dozen languages. He has also been active in helping shape a new subfield combining religious studies with environmental ethics, often referred to as “Religion and Ecology“, having edited a popular course text titled Worldviews, Religion and the Environment: A Global Anthology and two seminal volumes exploring environmental values among Muslims, Islam and Ecology: A Bestowed Trust and Environmentalism in the Muslim. His book Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures is the first scholarly survey of how Muslims have viewed the importance of non-human animals. He is currently working on a book entitled Religions of Iran: From Prehistory to the Present, which is due to be released in 2014. His most recent articles include Zoroastrians in Iran: What Future in the Homeland?, Zoroastrian Attitudes toward Animals, and Buddhism in the Iranian World.
