Robert Edward Gordon

Dr. Robert Edward Gordon is an Assistant Research Professor in the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom, an Instructor in the Fred Fox School of Music, and Senior Fellow at the UA Center for Buddhist Studies. He teaches MUS 160D1 – Human Achievement & Innovation in the Arts. Trained as a philosopher and an art historian, his work encompasses a broad range of interests: Eastern art and philosophy, art and economics, freedom and aesthetics, art and poverty, and humanistic geography. With an emphasis on the epistemologies of contemporary life, his writings investigate how the meanings and ideas embedded in the world (artworks, architecture, nature) are experienced in terms of the attitudes, perceptions, and values of the individual. 

“There is something about human beings as we proceed through life that makes us want to share what we know, to help the young and others by imparting our knowledge and wisdom in order to make a better society. At root we want to share our hearts. This is also the core of humanistic geography and the arts: as spaces that center human experience as the fulcrum of meaning vis-à-vis environment, and places where feelings and sentiments can find corporeal existence and privilege.” ~Robert Edward Gordon

Dr. Gordon is the author of Buddhist Architecture in America: Building for Enlightenment, the first comprehensive overview of the relationship between Buddhism and architecture in North America (Routledge 2023). Other writings can be found in The Wall Street Journal, Social Philosophy & Policy, Philosophies, Space and Culture, Humanities, Athenaeum Review, the Japanese American National Museum’s Traveling Exhibition, and elsewhere. Dr. Gordon has taught art history and philosophy at various colleges and universities over the last ten years, lectured at large corporations and museums, and has worked in Chicago as a corporate art consultant and gallery manager.