Natalie Gummer is professor of religious studies at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin, where she has taught since 2001. She graduated with a PhD from Harvard University in Buddhist Studies in 2000. Her research examines textual practices in premodern South Asian Mahayana Buddhist literary cultures, especially ritual uses of texts and oral performance, as well as the translation practices through which those cultures are transmitted and transformed. She also explores how Mahayana literature might offer us critical purchase on a range of contemporary ethical and philosophical debates. She is editor of The Language of the Sūtras: Essays in Honor of Luis Gómez, and the author of several articles on Buddhist ritual and literary culture. She is currently completing a monograph entitled Performing the Buddha’s Body: Mahāyāna Sūtras as Ritual Speech Acts.
Natalie Gummer