Women in the Study of Asian Religions https://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar Mon, 22 May 2023 11:03:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.4 Daniela Campo https://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/daniela-campo/ Sun, 14 May 2023 22:03:15 +0000 http://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/?p=1395

Presentation

As a sinologist and historian (Ph.D. in East-Asian Studies, École Pratique des Hautes Études, 2011), my research focuses on the evolution of institutions and practices of Chinese Buddhism, and of the Chan school in particular, in the twentieth century. I am especially interested in the links between the reconfiguration of Buddhism and the birth of a « modern Chinese Buddhism » at the end of the Qing and the Republican period on the one hand, and the reconstruction of Buddhism in the post-Maoist period and up to the present day on the other. Most of my work combines the analysis of textual sources with fieldwork.

Research themes

  • Religious biographies and autobiographies, and the relationship between hagiographical writing and the formation of religious leadership.
  • The evolution of institutions (Dharma lineages, monastic regulations and education) and practices (meditation techniques and teaching strategies) of Chinese Buddhism in the twentieth century.
  • The emergence of the new genre of religious instructions styled kaishi 開示.
  • The transmission of religious knowledge from the Republican period to post-Maoist China through the case study of Dajinshan 大金山 Chan female Monastery in Jiangxi.
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Stefania Travagnin https://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/stefania-travagnin/ Sun, 14 May 2023 21:58:01 +0000 http://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/?p=1398 Stefania Travagnin teaches at SOAS, University of London. Before joining SOAS, she held the position of founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Culture in Asia at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands. She has a MA in Chinese Studies from Ca’ Foscari University (Italy) and a PhD in the Study of Religion from SOAS. Travagnin has done field research among Buddhist communities in Taiwan for more than twenty years, has been visiting scholar in several Taiwanese institutes like Academia Sinica, National Cheng Chi University, and the Center of Chinese Studies at the National Central Library of Taipei; she has active collaborations with Taiwanese Buddhist institutions like Tzu Chi Foundation, and is a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Buddhism in Taiwan in Hsuan-Chuang University. Her research and publications on religion in Taiwan have explored especially Buddhist women, the phenomenon of Humanistic Buddhism, religion and media, and life and works of the monk Yinshun. In the past decade she has also researched Buddhist communities in Sichuan, and is currently co-director of the multiyear project “Mapping Religious Diversity in Modern Sichuan” (CCKF funds, 2017-2023). She has edited or co-edited several volumes, including Religion and Media in China: Insights and Case Studies from the Mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (Routledge, 2016), and the three-volume publication Concepts and Methods for the Study of Chinese Religions (De Gruyter, 2019-2020). She is co-editor of the journal Contemporary Buddhism, and editor-in-chief of Review of Religion and Chinese Society.

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Ester Bianchi https://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/ester-bianchi/ Sun, 14 May 2023 21:54:31 +0000 http://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/?p=1394 Ester Bianchi holds a Ph.D. in ‘Indian and East-Asian Civilization’ from the University of Venice (co-tutorial Ph.D. received from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Section des Sciences Religieuses of Paris).

She is currently Associate Professor of Chinese Religions and Philosophy and of Society and Culture of China, and Coordinator of the Double Degree in “World Religions and Philosophy” and in “Cultural Heritage, Religion and Society” (with the Department of Religious Studies of Fu-Jen University, Taipei) of the Department of Philosophy, Social Sciences and Education (Fissuf) of the University of Perugia. She is also Quality Assurance Office – Fissuf Departmental Referent and member of the Board of the Deputy’s Rector for internationalization and international cooperation at University of Perugia. She is member of the research groups “Culture, Languages, Practices (CLIPRA) at the Philosophy Department of the University of Perugia (Italy), and “Modern and Contemporary Buddhist Encounters in the Southern Sinosphere” at the Institute for the Study of Humanistic Buddhism (ISHB) of the University of the West, is external associated researcher of the Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités CNRS-EPHE (2012-), Research fellow of the Wutai International Institute of Buddhism and East Asian Cultures (since 2016), and a contributor of the Research project “Chinese Buddhism in Globalization: States, Communities, and Practices of Religion” (directed by Yoshiko Ashiwa and David Wank, Founded by the Henry Luce Foundation; 2020-). Her studies focus on the religions of China, particularly on Buddhism; her research is centered on Sino-Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese Buddhist monasticism, the revival of Buddhist monastic discipline and, more recently, the rediscovery of early meditation techniques and the spread of Theravāda Buddhist Model in modern Chinese Buddhism.

Ester Bianchi is the author of The Iron Statue Monastery, Tiexiangsi: A Buddhist Nunnery of Tibetan Tradition in Contemporary China (Firenze, Olschki, 2001), of a general book on the history, practices and cultural traditions of Daoism (Milano: Electa 2009), and of the first Italian translation of the Gaoseng Faxian zhuan (Faxian: un pellegrino cinese nell’India del V secolo, Perugia: Morlacchi 2013). Her co-edited volumes include: Facets of the Tibetan Religious Tradition and Contacts with Neighbouring Cultural Areas, co-edited with A. Cadonna (Firenze: Olschki 2002), Sino-Tibetan Buddhism Across the Ages, co-edited with Shen W. (Leiden: Brill 2021), and “Take the Vinaya as Your Master”: Monastic Discipline and Practices in Modern Chinese Buddhism, co-edited with D. Campo (Leiden: Brill 2023).

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WU Wei https://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/wu-wei/ Sun, 14 May 2023 21:51:28 +0000 http://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/?p=1393 My research interests include Chinese Buddhism, cross-cultural religious exchange, Buddhist modernity, religion and state, religion and ecology. My monography in preparation, Esoteric Buddhism in China, 1912-1949 intervenes in the fields of Religious Studies and History. It locates the cross-cultural religious transmission in China when Buddhists were challenged by discourses of nation-building and religious reform after 1912. It documents the transmission of certain lineages of Japanese and Tibetan esoteric Buddhism and their impact on local forms of Chinese Buddhism from the 1910s to the 1940s. I also examine how esoteric Buddhism underwent transmutations in doctrines, praxis, and institutional formations to adapt to the Chinese Buddhist world. I have written on Buddhism and superstition, the formation of a Tibetan Gelug lineage founded by the Chinese monk Nenghai in Chengdu, and the Chinese Buddhists’ learning of Tibetan commentaries. I also collaborated with scholars of various disciplines to investigate the religious history of Sichuan (https://sichuanreligions.com/). I teach courses on Asian religions, Religion and Modernity, and Religion and Ecology.

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Paulina Kolata https://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/paulina-kolata/ Thu, 19 Jan 2023 15:05:07 +0000 http://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/?p=1376 I’m a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for East and Southeast Asian Studies at Lund University, Sweden. My work explores ethnographically the socio-economic and demographic complexities of religion in contemporary Japan, focusing on Buddhism, depopulation, and people’s everyday lived experiences and their relation to particular pasts and imagined futures. I’m currently finishing a monograph that investigates the post-growth survival of Buddhist temple communities in regional Japan.

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Ting Guo https://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/ting-guo/ Thu, 19 Jan 2023 15:01:07 +0000 http://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/?p=1383 Smridhi Chadha https://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/smridhi-chadha/ Thu, 19 Jan 2023 14:59:51 +0000 http://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/?p=1387 33.6502914 -117.8281784 Yingruo Show https://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/yingruo-show/ Tue, 24 May 2022 15:29:54 +0000 http://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/?p=1364 1.2962018 103.7769012 Sara Swenson https://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/sara-swenson/ Tue, 24 May 2022 15:25:36 +0000 http://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/?p=1360 43.7052689 -72.2905197 Ellen Van Goethem https://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/ellen-van-goethem/ Tue, 24 May 2022 15:24:35 +0000 http://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/?p=1361 Ellen Van Goethem specializes in the history and archaeology of the Asuka, Nara, and early Heian periods. Her primary focus is on Kanmu Tennō (r. 781–806), on the layout of Japan’s ancient capital cities (kyūto), and on inscribed wooden tablets (mokkan). She has also published on site divination (geomancy, fengshui, shijin sōō) in premodern East Asia and on the influence of fengshui thought on contemporary Japanese architecture. Her current research, an institutional and social history of Heian Jingū, builds upon her earlier work. In this project, she investigates issues related to the reconstruction of long-lost buildings, the deification of emperors, the presence of Chinese cosmological symbolism in Shinto shrines, and changes in perceptions of Heian Jingū since its founding in the late nineteenth century.

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