Charles Stang joined the Faculty of Divinity in 2008. In 2017, he became the director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School.
His research and teaching focus on the history of Christianity in the context of the ancient Mediterranean world, especially Eastern varieties of Christianity. More specifically, his interests include: the development of asceticism, monasticism, and mysticism in Christianity; ancient philosophy, especially Neoplatonism; the Syriac Christian tradition, especially the spread of the East Syrian tradition along the Silk Road; other philosophical and religious movements of the ancient Mediterranean, including Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Manichaeism; and modern continental philosophy and theology, especially as they intersect with the study of religion.
His most recent book, Our Divine Double, was published in 2016 by Harvard University Press. His earlier book, Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite: “No Longer I” (Oxford University Press, 2012), won the Manfred Lautenschläger Award for Theological Promise in 2013. Stang is also editor of The Waking Dream of T.E. Lawrence: Essays on His Life, Literature, and Legacy (Palgrave, 2002); with Sarah Coakley, Rethinking Dionysius the Areopagite (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009); with David Lincicum and Ruth Sheridan, Law and Lawlessness in Early Judaism and Christianity (Mohr Siebeck, 2019).
Stang’s current projects include an anthology of Syriac Christian literature, a new translation of Evagrius of Pontus’s Gnostic Trilogy from Greek and Syriac, and an edited volume on Theosophy’s influence on the study of religion.