Ron Kidd, Adjunct Professor of Eastern Studies

Kidd has been an adjunct member of the Shimer faculty since 2000.  At Shimer, Kidd has offered numerous electives that complement the core curriculum with original texts from non-Western traditions in philosophy, literature, and

religion. In Chicago, Kidd has taught at DePaul University, Columbia College, and the Catholic Theological Union. While in Paris, Kidd studied under Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean Hyppolite. He has held senior administrative positions at the Institute of World Spirituality and the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions. Kidd is a Senior Dharma Teacher in the Kwan Um School of Zen and the founder and resident teacher at the Lincoln Park Zen group. He frequently leads a Zen meditation group at Shimer.

"Every once in a while I talk with a colleague at DePaul or somewhere else and when I tell him or her what I am teaching, they can hardly believe there's a place in the US where classic works can be brought directly into discussion. Then when I tell them of the small class sizes and the short focus statements students prepare, the look of utter envy crescendos! Believe me, teaching at Shimer is a nearly indescribable delight!" -- Ron Kidd

EDUCATION

Auditeur libre, Paris (1966-1968)

Bachelier en philosophie, licence en philosophie, Institute Superior de Philosophie, University of Louvain (Belgium) (1964, 1968)

Graduate, Crosier House of Studies (Catholic Seminary) (1962)

RECENT ELECTIVES AND TUTORIALS TAUGHT

Classics of China
The Tao Te Ching
The Tale of Genji
Qu'ran
Zhuangzi
The Confucian Tradition
The Four Yogas
Life of the Buddha
Zen Masters

AREAS OF INTEREST

What particularly fascinates me in Asian Studies is how philosophy, religion, and literature often move together, in works like the Upanishads in India, the Tao Te Ching in China, Zen poetry in Japan. Sometimes it's more on one side than the other like social ethics in the Confucian tradition, sometimes on the other, like the Zhuangzi in China or the Manyoshu poems in Japan. But the interplay catches my mind-heart.

PUBLICATIONS AND COLLOQUIA

Co-editor, The Dawn of Religious Pluralism (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1993).

NEH Seminar (Asceticism, in Hinduism and Buddhism), University of Chicago, summer 1996.