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Articles 1 - 30 of 85
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Patterns Of Integration: A Network Perspective On Popular Religious Connections In China’S Lower Yangzi, 1150–1350, Song Chen
Faculty Journal Articles
The spread of cults from their original homelands in the Song dynasty (960–1279) created crisscrossing ties between local communities and fostered social and cultural integration in Chinese society that transcended class and geographic boundaries. Scholars have produced numerous case studies on these translocal cults and their implications, but the pattern of connections across space created by these cults is yet to be explored. Using the data collected from local gazetteers that have survived from the Southern Song and Yuan dynasties, this article takes a bird’s‑eye view of the spatial distribution of popular cults in China’s Lower Yangzi region between 1150 …
A Century Of Critical Buddhism In Japan, James Mark Shields
A Century Of Critical Buddhism In Japan, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
This chapter introduces the central arguments of Critical Buddhism as a lens by which to view the course of “modern” Buddhism in Japan, particularly as it relates to politics. It traces philosophical and political precedents for Critical Buddhism in the context of Japanese modernity, by focusing on several progressive Buddhist figures movements from mid-Meiji through early Shōwa, including the New Buddhist Fellowship and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism. I argue that previous attempts to centralize criticism as a basic Buddhist precept were unsuccessful in part do to an inability to distinguish the Buddhistic components of their thought and practice, …
Prolegomena To A Buddhist(Ic) Critique Of Capitalism, James Mark Shields
Prolegomena To A Buddhist(Ic) Critique Of Capitalism, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
Not even three decades removed from Francis Fukuyama’s post-Cold War proclamation of the “End of History,” the Western world is now undergoing a crisis of conscience – at the very least – with respect to both capitalism as an economic system and neoliberalism as its less-recognized but ever-present ideological foundation. The financial crisis of 2008, the subsequent Great Recession, the Occupy movement(s) of 2011, the 2016 challenge of self-styled Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination, and growing anxiety about the fate of the planet, particularly among the young, have opened up new avenues of critique, and brought …
Zen Internationalism, Zen Revolution: Inoue Shūten, Uchiyama Gudō And The Crisis Of (Zen) Buddhist Modernity In Late Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields
Zen Internationalism, Zen Revolution: Inoue Shūten, Uchiyama Gudō And The Crisis Of (Zen) Buddhist Modernity In Late Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
In addition to the birth and development of “Imperial Way Zen,” late Meiji Japan witnessed the emergence of a number of young lay Buddhist scholars, priests and activists who attempted, with varying success, to reframe Buddhism along progressive and occasionally radical political lines. While it is true that groups such as the New Buddhist Fellowship (Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai, 1899–1915) were made up mainly of young men associated with the two branches of the Shin (True Pure Land) sect, several of its members did affiliate themselves with Zen, such as Suzuki Daisetsu (1870–1966) and Inoue Shūten (1880–1945). While the former’s work …
From Post-Pantheism To Trans-Materialism: D. T. Suzuki And New Buddhism, James Mark Shields
From Post-Pantheism To Trans-Materialism: D. T. Suzuki And New Buddhism, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
In modern Western thought, pantheism remains a powerful if controversial undercurrent. Recent re-evaluations of the work of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) point to pantheism’s radical implications for metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. Pantheism (Jp. hanshinron 汎神論) also has significant valence within Japanese Buddhist modernism, particularly in the work of scholars and lay activists who articulated the outlines of a New Buddhism (shin bukkyō 新仏教) from the 1880s through the 1940s. For these thinkers, pantheism provided a “middle way” between materialism and idealism, as well as between theism and atheism. In the postwar period, lapsed radical turned Buddhist Sano Manabu …
Buddhist Socialism In China, 1900–1930: A History And Appraisal, James Mark Shields
Buddhist Socialism In China, 1900–1930: A History And Appraisal, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
Although it is only in recent decades that scholars have begun to reconsider and problematize Buddhist conceptions of “freedom” and “agency,” the various thought traditions of Asian Buddhism have for some centuries struggled with questions related to the issue of “liberation,” along with its fundamental ontological, epistemological and ethical—if not economic and political—implications. With the development of Marxist thought in the mid to late nineteenth century, a new paradigm for thinking about freedom in relation to economics, history, identity and socio-political transformation found its way to Asia, where it soon confronted traditional religious interpretations of freedom as well as competing …
Zen And The Art Of Resistance: Some Preliminary Notes, James Mark Shields
Zen And The Art Of Resistance: Some Preliminary Notes, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
In the Western and oftentimes Asian imagination, Buddhism generally—and Zen more specifically—is understood as being resolutely disengaged, attaching itself to a form of awakening that is not only, as the classical phrase has it “beyond words and letters,” but in the modern summation by D. T. Suzuki, perfectly compatible with any and all forms of political and economic “dogmatism,” whether capitalist, communist, socialist, or fascist. Of course, as numerous scholars have shown over the past century, on the level of historical actuality, Buddhist and Zen teachers and institutions have long participated in (usually hegemonic) economic and political structures. The …
Case Study: Religion, Socialism And Secularization In Modern Japan: The New Buddhist Fellowship, James Mark Shields
Case Study: Religion, Socialism And Secularization In Modern Japan: The New Buddhist Fellowship, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
Religious Naturalisms, Carol W. White
Religious Naturalisms, Carol W. White
Other Faculty Research and Publications
This article focuses on recent developments in religious naturalism in the twenty-first century, building on Jerome Stone’s 2008 study of its resurgence in the mid-twentieth century. I introduce religious naturalism as a synthesis of naturalistic ideas that often depart from traditional forms of religious thinking, defining it as a capacious, ecological religious worldview grounded in the observational conviction that nature is ultimate. I also describe different models of religious naturalism, focusing on the key ideas found in the influential publications of contemporary religious naturalists (e.g., Ursula Goodenough, Donald Crosby, Loyal Rue, among others). While acknowledging specific points of emphasis, I …
Which Politics Of Nature?: A Response To Crawford, Carol W. White
Which Politics Of Nature?: A Response To Crawford, Carol W. White
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
Religious Naturalism, Myriad Nature, And Justice: A Reply To Kahn And Keller, Carol W. White
Religious Naturalism, Myriad Nature, And Justice: A Reply To Kahn And Keller, Carol W. White
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
ポスト汎神論から超物質主義へ―鈴木大拙と新仏教―, James Mark Shields
ポスト汎神論から超物質主義へ―鈴木大拙と新仏教―, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
In modern Western thought, pantheism remains a powerful if controversial undercurrent. Recent re-evaluations of the work of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) point to pantheism’s radical implications for metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. Pantheism (Jp. hanshinron 汎神論) also has significant valence within Japanese Buddhist modernism, particularly in the work of scholars and lay activists who articulated the outlines of a New Buddhism (shin bukkyō 新仏教) from the 1880s through the 1940s. For these thinkers, pantheism provided a “middle way” between materialism and idealism, as well as between theism and atheism. In the postwar period, lapsed radical turned Buddhist Sano Manabu …
Skeptical Buddhism As Provenance And Project, James Mark Shields
Skeptical Buddhism As Provenance And Project, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
The past century and a half has seen various attempts in both Asia and the West to reform or re-conceptualize Buddhism by adding a simple, often provocative, qualifier. This paper examines some of the links between “secular,” “critical,” “sceptical,” and “radical” Buddhism in order to ascertain possibilities in thinking Buddhism anew as a 21st-century “project” with philosophical, ethical, and political resonance. In particular, I am motivated by the question of whether “sceptical” Buddhism can coexist with Buddhist praxis, conceived as an engaged response to the suffering of sentient beings in a globalized and neoliberal industrial capitalist world order. Let …
Humanism In The Americas, Carol W. White
Humanism In The Americas, Carol W. White
Faculty Contributions to Books
This chapter provides an overview of select trends, ideas, themes, and figures associated with humanism in the Americas, which comprises a diversified set of peoples, cultural traditions, religious orientations, and socio-economic groups. In acknowledging this rich tapestry of human life, the chapter emphasizes the impressive variety of developments in philosophy, the natural sciences, literature, religion, art, social science, and political thought that have contributed to the development of humanism in the Americas. The chapter also features modern usages of humanism that originated in the English-speaking world in the nineteenth century. In this context, humanism is best viewed as a contested …
Zen Terror In Prewar Japan: Portrait Of An Assassin, Brian Victoria, James Shields
Zen Terror In Prewar Japan: Portrait Of An Assassin, Brian Victoria, James Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
Anna Julia Cooper: Radical Relationality And The Ethics Of Interdependence, Carol Wayne White
Anna Julia Cooper: Radical Relationality And The Ethics Of Interdependence, Carol Wayne White
Faculty Contributions to Books
In her range of activities as orator, scholar, community activist, and educator, Anna Julia Cooper demonstrates a basic orientation toward life that paradigmatically exemplifies a proto-feminist politics based in intersectional analysis. Addressing problematic gendered, racialized, and class power dynamics in various institutions, Cooper sought a readjustment of relationships among all Americans that would ensure the dignity and worth of each individual. A close reading of her corpus also shows Cooper consistently identifying principles that advanced nuanced approaches to justice, freedom, and equality. In this chapter, I propose that Cooper’s mature intellectual vision demonstrates a particular vision of a transformed America, …
Music And Communal Division During The French Wars Of Religion, Cameron G. Wade
Music And Communal Division During The French Wars Of Religion, Cameron G. Wade
Honors Theses
This Senior Honors Thesis explores the social and cultural impact of confessional musical composition and performance on the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598). Because Huguenots and Catholics identified with and were widely identifiable by their respective musical styles, cultural divisions between each confession were emphasized by differences in music. This capacity of sacred and confessionally-influenced secular music to highlight and reinforce societal divides is evidenced by the interconfessional violence that accompanied the public performance of sacred music in cities as well as the pressures imposed on composers to create music which clearly aligned with their respective confessions. As the wars …
Indigenous Healing In New Zealand: An Anthropological Analysis Of "Traditional" And "Modern" Approaches To Well-Being, Lillian T. Brice
Indigenous Healing In New Zealand: An Anthropological Analysis Of "Traditional" And "Modern" Approaches To Well-Being, Lillian T. Brice
Honors Theses
Drawing on contemporary anthropological approaches used by scholars of well-being and medical anthropology (i.e. Michael Jackson and Lisa Stevenson), I explore how indigenous healers in New Zealand blend “traditional” and “modern” elements to establish a creative and inclusive system. Specifically, I explore the use of herbal treatments, ritual chanting, and ceremonies that encapsulate Māori cultural values. I also explore the impact of biomedicine and New-Age wellness approaches on indigenous healing. I argue that Māori healing moves beyond the binary of “tradition” and “modern” as healers merge the past and present and combine the foreign and native. My research is based …
Making Evangelicals Great Again? American Evangelicals In The Age Of Trump, Brantley W. Gasaway
Making Evangelicals Great Again? American Evangelicals In The Age Of Trump, Brantley W. Gasaway
Faculty Journal Articles
This article analyzes the ways in which American evangelical Christians have responded to the presidential campaign and presidential administration of Donald Trump, with a particular focus on the faction of politically progressive evangelicals. While over 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump and over 70% continue to support his presidency, progressive evangelicals have vociferously opposed him. This article summarizes the proposals, protests, and petitions of progressive evangelicals with respect to four broad issues: racial justice, immigration, healthcare, and economic policies. Though some conservative and moderate evangelicals have also criticized Trump’s personal behavior and politics, numerous factors hinder their potential partnerships …
Review: Melissa Anne-Marie Curley, Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists, And The Utopian Imagination, James Shields
Review: Melissa Anne-Marie Curley, Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists, And The Utopian Imagination, James Shields
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
Essay: “My Life In Buddhist Studies", James Shields
Essay: “My Life In Buddhist Studies", James Shields
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
Living The Bhagavad Gita At Gandhi's Ashrams, Karline Mclain
Living The Bhagavad Gita At Gandhi's Ashrams, Karline Mclain
Faculty Journal Articles
The Bhagavad Gita is a philosophical Hindu scripture in which the god Krishna imparts lessons to the warrior prince Arjuna about sacred duty (dharma) and the path to spiritual liberation (moksha). This classical scripture has had a long and active interpretive life, and by the 19th century it had come to be regarded as a core text, if not the core text, of Hinduism. During the colonial period, interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita considered the relevance of Krishna’s lessons to Arjuna in the context of British colonial rule. While some Indians read a call to arms into their interpretation of …
Blended With The Savior: Gregory Of Nyssa's Eucharistic Pharmacology In The Catechetical Oration, John David Penniman
Blended With The Savior: Gregory Of Nyssa's Eucharistic Pharmacology In The Catechetical Oration, John David Penniman
Faculty Journal Articles
Humankind, for Gregory of Nyssa, was poisoned through a primordial act of eating the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden. As a result, the toxin of sin and death has been blended into the body and soul of each person, dispersing itself throughout the component parts of their nature. If eating and drinking initiated the spiritual and physical degradation of humanity, Gregory argues, then it must also be through eating and drinking—namely, through the Eucharist—that humanity will be healed. This article proposes that Gregory's instruction on the Eucharist in his Catechetical Oration should be understood as more than merely …
Listening To An/Other Voice: Gender, Creativity, And The Divine In The Works Of Female Christian Mystics And Women Surrealists, Stephanie Garboski
Listening To An/Other Voice: Gender, Creativity, And The Divine In The Works Of Female Christian Mystics And Women Surrealists, Stephanie Garboski
Honors Theses
This thesis will compare two groups, Christian women mystics and women surrealists, by analyzing select works by Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Leonora Carrington, and Dorothea Tanning. This analysis will involve a comparative, theoretical approach that draws connections between the way in which both groups utilize varying literary and artistic forms, symbols, and polyglottery. I will utilize Bourdieu’s terms of cultural production as a framework in which to better understand how women of both fields are used for their creativity and supposed connection to an/other, which is the source of inspiration native to each field, God and the unconscious. …
Black Lives, Sacred Humanity, And The Racialization Of Nature, Or Why America Needs Religious Naturalism Today, Carol W. White
Black Lives, Sacred Humanity, And The Racialization Of Nature, Or Why America Needs Religious Naturalism Today, Carol W. White
Faculty Journal Articles
Embedded in persistent representations of people of African descent as inferior beings or subpar humans are problematic notions of animality, race, and nature in the U.S., or a lethal combination of intimately conjoined white supremacy and species supremacy. Confronting these processes is a model of African American religious naturalism, which presupposes human animals’ deep, inextricable homology with each other and with other natural processes. Building on the ideas of Anna J. Cooper, W. E. B. du Bois, and James Baldwin, this model of religious naturalism emphasizes humans as sacred centers of value and distinct movements of nature itself where deep …
Immanent Frames: Meiji New Buddhism And The 'Religious Secular', James Shields
Immanent Frames: Meiji New Buddhism And The 'Religious Secular', James Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
The secularization thesis, rooted in the idea that “modernity” brings with it the destruction—or, at least, the ruthless privatization—of religion, is clearly grounded in specific, often oversimplified, interpretations of Western historical developments since the eighteenth century. In this article, I use the case of the New Buddhist Fellowship (Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai 新仏教同志会) of the Meiji period (1868–1911) to query the category of the secular in the context of Japanese modernity. I argue that the New Buddhists, drawing on elements of classical and East Asian Buddhism as well as modern Western thought, promoted a resolutely social and this-worldly Buddhism that …
Commentary On Against Harmony, James Shields
Commentary On Against Harmony, James Shields
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
The Scope And Limits Of Secular Buddhism: Watanabe Kaikyoku (1868–1912) And The Japanese New Buddhist 'Discovery Of Society', James Shields
The Scope And Limits Of Secular Buddhism: Watanabe Kaikyoku (1868–1912) And The Japanese New Buddhist 'Discovery Of Society', James Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
Although New Buddhism is a term sometimes employed to refer to the broad sweep of reform and modernization movements in Japanese Buddhist thought and practice beginning in the 1870s, the term shin bukkyō refers more specifically to a broadly influential movement of some two dozen young scholars and lay Buddhists active in the last decade of the Meiji period (1868–1912). Founded in February 1899 as Bukkyō Seito Dōshikai (Buddhist Pure Believers Fellowship or Buddhist Puritan Association), the group changed its name to Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai (New Buddhist Fellowship) in 1903. Notto Thelle refers to the NBF as “the most consistent …
Book Review: Kirin Narayan, Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses In The Himalayan Foothills (Kirin Narayan), Coralynn V. Davis
Book Review: Kirin Narayan, Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses In The Himalayan Foothills (Kirin Narayan), Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
No abstract provided.
Shirdi Sai Baba As Guru And God: Narasimhaswami’S Vision Of The Samartha Sadguru, Karline Mclain
Shirdi Sai Baba As Guru And God: Narasimhaswami’S Vision Of The Samartha Sadguru, Karline Mclain
Faculty Journal Articles
B. V. Narasimhaswami (1874–1956) never met Shirdi Sai Baba face to face, for he arrived in Shirdi eighteen years after Sai Baba’s death in 1918. However, the overwhelming sense of loving union he experienced in Shirdi convinced him that Sai Baba was still accessible from beyond the grave. For the remaining years of his life he worked relentlessly to spread Sai Baba’s name throughout India. This article examines the tension between inclusion and exclusion in Narasimhaswami’s interpretation of Sai Baba. Narasimhaswami believed that Sai Baba was a divinized guru with two interconnected missions: The spiritual uplift of individuals and the …