Dr. Robert Edward Gordon is an Assistant Professor at the Fred Fox School of Music in the College of Fine Arts, an Affiliated Associate with the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom. As Program Manager of the American Culture & Ideas Initiative, he facilitates cross-college interdisciplinary partnerships that includes teaching, course development, grant writing, and scholarly research. 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 its relationship to the fine arts, 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 subjective attitudes, perceptions, and values of the individual.
Dr. Gordon has taught art history and philosophy at various colleges and universities over the last ten years. He has lectured at large corporations and museums on Baroque and Contemporary Art, and worked in Chicago as a corporate art consultant in addition to managing a number of retail art galleries. Elements of his research are incorporated in the Japanese American National Museum’s Traveling Exhibition.
Professor Gordon is presently working with local museums and religious organizations on an exhibition that highlights the importance of Tibetan stupas located throughout the American Southwest. His current book project, Reality is Here: The Appearance of Buddhist Architecture in America, investigates the scriptural foundation for Buddhist architecture and its development in an American setting.