Edward K. Kaplan (b. 1942) was a Professor of French, Comparative Literature, Religious Studies, and Humanities at Brandeis University from 1978 to his retirement and subsequent Emeritus status in 2015. He received his BA from Brown University and his MA and PhD from Columbia University. Professor Kaplan served as Chair of the Romance Studies and Religious Studies during his time at Brandeis University and was named the Kevy and Hortense Kaiserman Professor of the Humanities in 2003. Professor Kaplan was a scholar of French Romanticism and Modern French poetry, as well as 20th century religious writers, and was interested in how aesthetic, moral, and religious concerns influenced human experience through literature and thought. He taught courses on the French novel, Existentialism, and religious mysticism. He was a noted translator of Baudelaire and wrote the first intellectual and cultural biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel, Spiritual Radical.
