Interconnection: A Conversation with Professor Hopkins

Although cliché, some professors at Swarthmore make an impression in the way they lecture, while others do so in the way they inherently challenge you to your core, creating mental chasms through your body and mind. But few weave their lived experience and genuine, natural curiosity as seamlessly into their teaching as Professor Steven Hopkins. Sitting across from him in office hours, the stories of his life unfold not as a linear progression but as a series of interwoven narratives — much like the poetry and religious teachings he explores in his courses.

Professor Hopkins did not take the “traditional” path into academia or Swarthmore College. In his twenties, he was a poet, a musician, and a literary wanderer, immersed in Santa Barbara’s small press scene. He lived in a world of words before deciding to formalize his intense love of literature through higher education. He recounts late nights in cafes, poetry readings on a local radio show, and his formative relationship with the Spanish-South Asian scholar-theologian Raimundo Panikkar, who first introduced him to the comparative study of literature and, by proxy, religion. This meeting, through his then-girlfriend (now wife), altered the course of his life, leading him to study under Panikkar and be introduced to the beauty of literary interconnection and interdisciplinary studies, focusing on Catholic, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions, eventually Greek, Sanskrit, and Pāli.  But even then, Professor Hopkins had a strong sense of self, knowing he needed to carve his own intellectual path. He worked as Panikkar’s editor for a year before realizing he wanted to pursue his own independent studies rather than become a disciple.

His journey through academia — Pierce Community College to the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) to UC Berkeley to Harvard University — mirrors his lifelong fascination with cultural and linguistic intersections. He speaks of knowledge as something that “passes through the travail of comparison,” an idea he attributes to Laurence Sullivan. For Professor Hopkins, understanding religion is not about isolated traditions or cultures but the ways in which texts, beliefs, and human experiences cross borders and languages. He first traveled to India during his graduate studies and the formulation of his dissertation, drawn by the poetry of a South Indian saint whose verses encompass Sanskrit, Tamil, and Prakrit. His study with folklorist-scholar-poet A.K. Ramanujan and his multilingual poetry deeply influenced his academic trajectory, inspiring him to learn Tamil alongside Sanskrit and to immerse himself in temple cultures of Tamil Nadu. Professor Hopkins finished with a Ph.D. in the comparative study of religion from Harvard University, and following this, he became a professor at Swarthmore. His initial trip to India led him to decades of research on sacred spaces, the living presence of gods in temples, and the ways that poetry breathes life into devotion. His work explores how religious poetry and iconography interact within these spaces, making them more than just artistic expressions but active, living traditions.

Swarthmore has been his home for 32 years. The students, he says, have reshaped his intellectual world as much as any book or temple. He acknowledges his own limited background as a white, male American scholar of South Asian religions, emphasizing how Swarthmore’s increasing diversity has enriched both his teaching and personal growth. He delights in the unexpected intersections, the ways students bring new perspectives into his classroom, challenging and expanding the scope of his work. He sees his classroom as a space of mutual learning, where comparative studies of religion become deeply personal explorations for both him and his students.

Now, Professor Hopkins is turning to lament — specifically, the power of female lament across Hindu epics, Homer and the Greek tragedies, Greek Christian, Rabbinic, and Buddhist narratives. He speaks of loss, love, and grief that defies religious abstraction and insists on being felt. His latest research, having been worked on for the past 20 years, examines figures like Andromache, Helen, the Virgin Mary, Rachel in Lamentations Rabbah, Sītā in the Hindu Rāmāyaṇa, the Buddha’s wife Yaśodharā, and the inconsolable mourning of parents, lovers, and widows who refuse to let loss be erased. He explores the ethical and emotional weight of lamentation, noting that expressions of grief often challenge societal and religious norms, in ritual practice and in literature. In an era that often seeks to move past grief too quickly, Professor Hopkins is drawn to its weight and its witness-bearing. His research asks how grief functions in religious and literary texts — not just as an emotional response but as a form of resistance against forgetting and erasure.

Listening to Professor Hopkins speak is akin to reading poetry aloud — it moves, it entrances, it’s enthralling. His life, much like his scholarship, is a study in contrast and connections. He is a poet who became a scholar, a traveler who found solace in the transcendence of words, and a professor whose classroom is as much a space for dialogue as it is for discovery. In his classroom, the study of religion is not just an academic pursuit but a way of seeing — across traditions, across time, and, most importantly, across human experience.