Dr. Lance Nelson

Professor and Chair
Ph.D., McMaster University

Contact information

Office: Maher 277
Phone: (619) 260-4054
Fax: (619) 260-2260
E-mail: lnelson@sandiego.edu

Research specialties

Advaita Vedanta, medieval Hindu theology, philosophical traditions of India, Hinduism and ecology

Teaching specialties

Hinduism, Buddhism, world religions, comparative religious ethics

Selected publications

"Ecology." In Studying Hinduism: Key Concepts and Methods, ed. Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby, 97-111. New York: Routledge, 2008.

“Krishna in Advaita Vedanta: The Supreme Brahman in Human Form.”  In Krishna: A Sourcebook, ed. Edwin F. Bryant, 309-328. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

"Theological Politics and Paradoxical Spirituality in the Life of Madhusudana Sarasvati." Journal of Vaishnava Studies 15 (Spring 2007): 19-34.

“Nature and Ecology.” In Encyclopedia of Hinduism, ed. Denise Cush and Katherine Robinson. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2007.

“Cows, Elephants, Dogs, and Other Lesser Embodiments of Atman: Reflections on Hindu Attitudes towards Nonhuman Animals.” In A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, ed.  Paul Waldau and Kimberly Patton, 179-193.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

"The Ontology of Bhakti: Devotion as Paramapurusartha in Gaudiya Vaisnavism and Madhusudana Sarasvati.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 32/4 (November, 2004): 345-392.

“Reading the Bhagavad Gita from an Ecological Perspective.”  In Hinduism and Ecology: The Intersection of Earth, Sky, and Water, ed. Christopher Key Chapple and Mary Evelyn Tucker, 127-164. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Purifying God’s Earthly Body: Religion and Ecology in Hindu India (editor).  “The Dualism of Nondualism: Advaita Vedanta and the Irrelevance of Nature,” chap. 6.  Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998.

“Bhakti Preempted: Madhusudana Sarasvati on Devotion for the Advaitin Renouncer.”  Journal of Vaisnava Studies 6 (Winter 1998): 53-74.

“Living Liberation in Sankara and Classical Advaita: Sharing the Holy Waiting of God.”  In Living Liberation in Indian Thought, edited by Andrew O. Fort and Patricia Y. Mumme, 17-62.  Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996.

“Theism for the Masses, Non-dualism for the Monastic Elite: A Fresh Look at Sankara's Trans-theistic Spirituality.”  In The Struggle Over the Past: Fundamentalism in the Modern World, edited by William Shea, 61-77.  College Theology Society Papers, 1989.  Latham, MD: University Press of America, 1993.