Member Details

David L. Gitomer is Associate Professor of Religious Studies, as well as Director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies Programs at DePaul University. He holds a Ph.D. in South Asian Languages and Literatures from Columbia University, and is the author of several books and numerous articles on the literature, performance traditions, and religion of ancient India. He has translated Kalidasa's Urvasi Won by Valor for Theater of Memory, edited by Barbara Stoler Miller (Columbia University Press). Most recently he has completed The Binding of the Braid: the great epic as classical drama, a translation and study of the Venisamhara of Bhatta Narayana (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). As a contribution to the University of Chicago Mahabharata translation project, he is translating The Book of Bhisma which includes the Hindu religious classic, the Bhagavad Gita. In the past several years he has been invited to present papers at international conferences in Edinburgh, Dubrovnik and Delhi. In addition to teaching courses on Hinduism and Buddhism, he regularly teaches in the Catholic Studies Program. Among his studies of Catholicism and the arts is a recent article on Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites” appeared in Logos, Spring 2009. He became director the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program, an interdisciplinary graduate program for working adults, in 1998, and in 2002 he assumed the directorship of the Master of Arts/Master of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies Program as well. He has twice served on the board of directors of the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs, and beginning in October 2010 he will serve as president of the AGLSP. For more than ten years he has been active national and regional initiatives to strengthen graduate programs for adult learners. For nearly a quarter century he has done advocacy and support work for people with HIV. In October 2008, he was given the “Friend for Life” award from the Howard Brown Health Center in recognition of twenty years of facilitating a support group for people with HIV.