Alan Cole

Alan Cole received his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Michigan in 1994. He then taught mainly at Lewis & Clark College (1994-2013). He retired early, in 2013, in order to spend more time writing, and in the hope of regaining a sense of freedom that academia had, slowly but surely, eaten into. This choice seems to have been fruitful since he recently published two new books -- Fetishizing Tradition: Desire and Reinvention in Buddhist and Christian Narratives (SUNY, 2015), and Patriarchs on Paper: A Critical History of Medieval Chan Literature (UCal Press, 2016) -- both of which lay out new and creative ways to think about old problems in Buddhism and Christianity.

Besides writing about religion, Cole spends a lot of time playing music, mainly on electric guitar, but also on pedal steel guitar.