Jeffrey Stout grew up in Trenton, New Jersey, and was involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements in his teens and twenties. While attending college at Brown University, he chaired a student strike, ran the Rhode Island Draft Information Center, and founded Issues, a journal of opinion. Upon graduating from Brown in 1972, he began his doctoral work at Princeton University, where he taught in the Department of Religion from 1975 until his retirement in 2018. At Princeton, he chaired his department and received awards for teaching and mentoring. He has served as a trustee of Princeton University Press, the Journal of Religious Ethics, and Anthology Film Archives. Stout served as president of the American Academy of Religion in 2007, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008. His 2017 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh discussed the political implications of ancient, medieval, and modern conceptions of religion.

Link to Dean of the Faculty Bio:

https://dof.princeton.edu/about/clerk-faculty/emeritus/jeffrey-l-stout

Research:

Jeff is a theorist and historian of democratic culture. His work is concerned with ethics, religious thought, political theory, law, and film. Two of his books have received awards for excellence from the American Academy of Religion. He co-edited the Cambridge University Press Series on Religion and Critical Thought. 

Teaching:

Jeff taught religion, ethics, politics, social criticism, and film at Princeton University from 1975 until his retirement in 2018.

He received Princeton’s Graduate Mentoring Award in 2009 and the President’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2010.

Member of:

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Editorial Board, Princeton University Press (2000-04)

Board of Trustees, Anthology Film Archives (2009-11)

Editorial Board, Contemporary Pragmatism (2004-)

Editorial Board, Theology Today (2007-)