Catherine L. Albanese (born 1940) is an American religious studies scholar, professor, lecturer, and author. Born and raised in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, Pennsylvania, she graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts from

Chestnut Hill College Chestnut Hill College is a private Catholic college in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The college was founded in 1924 as a women's college by the Sisters of St. Joseph. It was originally named Mount Saint Joseph College ...

in 1962. She received her Master’s Degree in History from Duquesne University in 1968, and completed her Doctorate for History of Christianity at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in 1972. She taught Religious Studies at the

University of California-Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the Un ...

, and served as chair of the department. She was influential in founding the North American Religions Section of the

American Academy of Religion The American Academy of Religion (AAR) is the world's largest association of scholarly method, scholars in the List of academic disciplines, field of religious studies and related topics. It is a nonprofit member association, serving as a profes ...

(AAR) in the 1970s. In 1994, she was elected president of the AAR. She is the author of the religion textbook ''America: Religions and Religion'', which is in its fifth edition. Other books she has authored include ''Corresponding Motion: Transcendental Religion and the New America'' (1977), ''Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age'' (1990), and '' A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion'' (2007). She edited ''The Spirituality of the American Transcendentalists: Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Amos Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker and Henry David Thoreau,'' which was published in 1988. Albanese was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science in 2014. As of October 2021, Albanese is the Distinguished Emerita Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara.

References

Living people 1940 births American historians Educators from Philadelphia University of Chicago alumni {{US-historian-stub