Tim Knepper

Professor of Philosophy 
Director, The Comparison Project
Office Location: 203 Medbury Hall
(515) 271-2167
Office Hours Fall 2023: 
Tuesday and Wednesday, 11:00AM - 12:00 PM, 2:00-3:00 PM

tim.knepper@drake.edu                                                           

Tim Knepper CV

Timothy Knepper is a Professor of Philosophy at Drake University, where he directs The Comparison Project, a public program in comparative philosophy of religion, the study of local-lived religion, and the cultivation of interfaith leadership. He is the author of books on the future of the philosophy of religion (The Ends of Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave, 2013) and the sixth-century Christian mystic known as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (Negating Negation, Wipf & Stock, 2014), as well as a textbook in “global-critical philosophy of religion (Philosophies of Religion: A Global and Critical Introduction, Bloomsbury, 2022). He is also the editor of student-written, photo-narratives about religion in Des Moines (A Spectrum of Faith, Drake Community Press, 2017) and in Beijing (Religions of Beijing, Bloomsbury, 2020), as well as The Comparison Project's lecture and dialogue series on ineffability (Ineffability: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion, Springer, 2017) and death and dying (Death and Dying: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion, Springer, 2019). He also co-directs a seminar in global-critical philosophy of religion for the American Academy of Religion.

 The Comparison Project programming for 2022-23 includes a lecture series about transhumanism and religion, monthly site visits to local places of worship (“Meet My Religious Neighbor,” a collaboration with CultureALL, the Des Moines Area Religious Council, and Interfaith Alliance of Iowa), the Iowa Interfaith Conference in October 2022 (in collaboration with, and held at, Loras College), and the seventh-annual interfaith youth leadership camp in summer 2023 (in collaboration with the Des Moines Area Religious Council).

Tim's chief research project at the time is monograph in the rhetorics and politics of ineffability in twentieth-century mysticism studies. He is also editing, contributing to, and concluding over a couple dozen scholarly essays on reimagined questions, topics, and categories for global-critical philosophy of religion.