Robert A. Orsi

Robert Anthony Orsi (born 1953) is a scholar of American history and Catholic studies who is the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair professor at Northwestern University.

Biography Orsi was born and raised in the Bronx, New York City. He majored in religion and sociology at Trinity College in Connecticut and graduated salutatorian in 1975, receiving both a Danforth and Watson Scholarship. He attended graduate school in religion at Yale University where his prize-winning dissertation formed the basis of his first book, The Madonna of 115th Street.

He taught at Fordham University at Lincoln Center from 1981 to 1988, at Indiana University from 1988 to 2001, and Harvard University and Harvard Divinity School from 2001 to 2007. At Harvard, he became chairman of the Committee on the Study of Religion. In his words: "They had offered my wife three years of full teaching, [but] actually cut it down to half-time. When they did that, I simply couldn't stay here anymore." From 2020 to 2021, he was a Faculty Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. Orsi's wife was also offered a position at Northwestern, as a full professor in religion with a joint appointment in German. Orsi also made the comment, "the assumption appears to be that the scholar of religion by virtue of his or her normative epistemology, theoretical acuity, and political knowingness, has the authority and the right to make the lives of others the objects of his or her scrutiny. He or she theorizes them." McCutcheon responded with a paper included in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion entitled, "It's a Lie. There's No Truth in It! It's a Sin! On the Limits of the Humanistic Study of Religion and the Costs of Saving Others from Themselves".

Awards 2000 Guggenheim Fellowship 1999 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship Fulbright Fellowship John Gilmary Shea Prize from the American Catholic Historical Association for The Madonna of 115th Street Jesuit National Book Award, for The Madonna of 115th Street Merle Curti Award in American Social History from the Organization of American Historians, for Thank You, Saint Jude Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion from the American Academy of Religion, for Between Heaven and Earth

Works "When 2+2=5", The American Scholar, Spring 2007 History and Presence. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2016. .

(1st edition 1985; 2nd edition 2002),

Edited