Biography

Carl Raschke - Biography

Carl Raschke was born in New York City and has lived in Texas, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Oklahoma.

A fraternal twin, he grew up in the town of Denison, Texas, which is also the birthplace of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He later moved with his family to the San Francisco Bay Area and graduated from high school in Lafayette, California. He received his Bachelor of Arts Degree from Pomona College in Claremont, California and his Master of Arts from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He went on to finish his Ph.D. at Harvard University and began teaching at the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado, where he is currently Professor of Religious Studies and past chair of the department (2001-07).

During his lifetime, in addition to his high-profile academic career, he has been a journalist, both full-time and part-time, as well as a magazine publishing entrepreneur and consultant/ expert witness working with attorneys and law enforcement agencies on matters involving different kinds of religious practices. He has published numerous books, articles, and op-ed essays in major daily newspapers on various topics including themes in contemporary philosophy and Christianity, globalization and world religions (including Islam), digital culture and its impact on learning, and contemporary culture and the arts, particularly modern and postmodern painting. He is a well-known expert on religion and higher education, who has been interviewed and quoted on at least 900 different occasions over two decades in numerous local, regional, national, and international media outlets, including all the major US television networks (often on repeat occasions). During the late 1980s and early 1990s he advised the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, DC on matters involving core curriculum. He served for several years as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Core Curriculum. At present he is a regular contributor to the blogs Church and Pomo and to JCRT Live, the blog of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory .

Since 1997 he has been married to his artist wife Sunny Raschke, who grew up in Chicago but moved to Texas in the early Eighties. Sunny has worked both full-time and part-time for more than 25 years in women's retailing and for the past several years has been immersed in a career as a professional artist, which she studied to be earlier in life.

Carl has one adult son, Erik, who is a published novelist and author of The Book of Samuel. Erik and his family reside in Amsterdam, and have two sons named Kes and Casjen, born in 2006 and 2009 respectively.

Carl has traveled widely in Europe and at present is developing a major educational project and through the University of Denver in Vienna, Austria, which will be launched in September 2011.

He and Sunny currently live in Denver, but travel regularly back and forth to their five acres of property on the Oklahoma side of Lake Texoma, where they also own The Edge and Gallery and Studio.

Carl is available for speaking and special workshops or seminars. For more information contact him at carlraschke@gmail.com.