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East Asian Languages and Societies

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Sattha, Money And Idols: Intersections Between Capitalist Commodification Of Thai K-Pop And Buddhist Fandoms, Pornpailin Meklalit May 2021

Sattha, Money And Idols: Intersections Between Capitalist Commodification Of Thai K-Pop And Buddhist Fandoms, Pornpailin Meklalit

Master's Projects and Capstones

This study investigates the cultural, economic, and spiritual meanings, as well as the goals of activities carried out by both the K-pop fandom (specifically fans of EXO and NCT) and Buddhist devotees in Thailand—and their considerable degree of overlap. While Thai Buddhism is revered, K-pop fandom is stigmatized as an extreme, problematic form of behavior. This research builds parallels between these activities as forms of faith, which are mostly shaped by the same economic structures, with money as a medium that allows spiritual connection and comfort for fans. Moreover, travel and pilgrimages are physical and spiritual journeys that exist for …


Case Study: Religion, Socialism And Secularization In Modern Japan: The New Buddhist Fellowship, James Mark Shields Mar 2021

Case Study: Religion, Socialism And Secularization In Modern Japan: The New Buddhist Fellowship, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.


“Publishing Goals Of Hanseikai Zasshi” (1887) And “Living The Pure Life” (1887). Translations With Introduction And Commentary, James Mark Shields Mar 2021

“Publishing Goals Of Hanseikai Zasshi” (1887) And “Living The Pure Life” (1887). Translations With Introduction And Commentary, James Mark Shields

Other Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.


方• 圓 Between Square And Circle, Xin Tong Jan 2021

方• 圓 Between Square And Circle, Xin Tong

MA Projects

Since ancient times, rarely have there been any motifs that can transcend the fetters of time, space, race, religion, territory as well as tradition, becoming cultural symbols, cultural prototypes, and cultural conception in broad terms, while the Mandala being one of them, a prototypical motif with superb transcendence. As the famous Swiss psychologist Jung has mentioned in his book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Mandala is a magic ring, which, being a symbol, is not only widely spread in the whole East, but also common in the Middle Ages of his place, and the East undoubtedly has the most …


Blurring The Boundary Between Play And Ritual: Sugoroku Boards As Portable Cosmos In Japanese Religion, Jingyi Yuan Jan 2021

Blurring The Boundary Between Play And Ritual: Sugoroku Boards As Portable Cosmos In Japanese Religion, Jingyi Yuan

Honors Papers

This thesis examines two Japanese board games, both called sugoroku 双六, from a religious studies perspective. Although bearing the same name, ban-sugoroku 盤双六 and e-sugoroku 絵双六 have long been studied separately because of their different origins, eras, layouts and rules. However, an examination of visual and textual evidence such as illustrated handscrolls and encyclopedic sources demonstrates that the two games are strikingly similar: both games carry cosmological meanings, and their religious functions are closely tied to the process of playing. I propose that the inextricable nature of ritual and play exhibited in both games enabled them to serve for laypersons …


'Seeds Of Happiness': An Oral History Of Members Of Soka Gakkai International-New Orleans, Lorvelis Amelia Madueño Dec 2020

'Seeds Of Happiness': An Oral History Of Members Of Soka Gakkai International-New Orleans, Lorvelis Amelia Madueño

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Soka Gakkai International (SGI) is a Japanese new religious movement present in 192 countries. Despite the substantial amount of academic work that has been produced on SGI’s overseas expansion, many scholars continue to overlook the local context when analyzing the organization’s global presence. This paper is based on oral history interviews and examines the experiences of five members of the SGI-USA New Orleans Buddhist Center, located in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. This thesis argues that many SGI practitioners choose to join and remain in the organization because it fills specific spiritual and emotional voids in their lives, creates …


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 Oct 2020

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 Sep 2020

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 …


Creative Nothingness: Dada As Art, Politics And Religion In Interwar Japan, James Mark Shields Sep 2020

Creative Nothingness: Dada As Art, Politics And Religion In Interwar Japan, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

The decades immediately following the Meiji Restoration of 1868 saw Japan rapidly develop as a “modern” nation — replete with industrial technology, a powerful and sophisticated military, a burgeoning capitalist economy, a broad based educational system, and, by the early twentieth century, a massive influx of contemporary Western political, philosophical, literary and artistic ideals, including socialism, anarchism, and nearly all variations of avant-garde art and aesthetics. By the end of the Meiji period, however, with the crackdown on leftist activities in the wake of the High Treason Incident (1910–1911) and the slow but steady accretion of Japanese imperialist ideology through …


Izutsu’S Zen Metaphysics Of I-Consciousness Vis-À-Vis Cartesian Cogito, Takaharu Oda, Alessio Bucci Jul 2020

Izutsu’S Zen Metaphysics Of I-Consciousness Vis-À-Vis Cartesian Cogito, Takaharu Oda, Alessio Bucci

Comparative Philosophy

Chief amongst the issues Toshihiko Izutsu broached is the philosophisation of Zen Buddhism in his book Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism. This article aims to critically compare Izutsu’s reconstruction of Zen metaphysics with another metaphysical tradition rooted in Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. Putting Izutsu’s terminological choices into the context of Zen Buddhism, we review his argument based on the subject-object distinction and establish a comparison with the Cartesian cogito. A critical analysis is conducted on the functional relationship between subject and object in Izutsu’s metaphysics of Zen (meditation). This is examined step by step from the perspective of …


Savoring The Moon: Japanese Prints Of The Floating World, Madison B. Dalton May 2020

Savoring The Moon: Japanese Prints Of The Floating World, Madison B. Dalton

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Guided by the Director of the Madison Art Collection and Lisanby Museum, Virginia Soenksen,I served as the Curatorial Assistant for the Lisanby Museum’s forthcoming exhibition Savoring the Moon: Japanese Prints of the Floating World. The exhibition will highlight the Madison ArtCollection’s impressive Japanese woodblock prints in the ukiyo-e style. Ukiyo-e translates to“pictures of the floating world.” This style proliferated in Japan during the Edo period (1603 - 1868) and Meiji period (1868 - 1912), with visual themes that ranged from flora and fauna, Japanese ceremonies, kabuki actors, mythology, courtesans, and cultural pastimes. The estate of Charles Alvin Lisanby gifted over …


Incarcerated, T.Willaim Wallin May 2020

Incarcerated, T.Willaim Wallin

Toyon: Multilingual Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.


Foreword To Brian Victoria, Zen Terror: Portrait Of An Assassin, James Mark Shields Feb 2020

Foreword To Brian Victoria, Zen Terror: Portrait Of An Assassin, James Mark Shields

Other Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.


Gomyō And Kūkai In Early-Heian Intra-Buddhist Conversations, Ronald S. Green Feb 2020

Gomyō And Kūkai In Early-Heian Intra-Buddhist Conversations, Ronald S. Green

Philosophy and Religious Studies

This paper is about the relationship between the famous Japanese esoteric Buddhist Kūkai and the less-famous Gomyō, who you've probably never heard of but maybe should have. My paper responds to the work of two recent scholars, Fujii Jun, who says that Kūkai was a Sanron (Japanese Mādhyamika) priest, and Matsumoto Gyoyu, who speculates about the origins of and thinking behind certain passages in Kūkai's Jūjūshinron. The paper points to the intellectual significance for Kūkai of his close relationship with Gomyō and other Yogācāra scholars of his day, and how this is reflected in the Jūjūshinron and Kūkai's thought broadly. …


Carrying Buddha Into The Streets: Buddhist Socialist Thought In Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields Jun 2019

Carrying Buddha Into The Streets: Buddhist Socialist Thought In Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.


Osvobození Jako Revoluční Praxe: Opĕtovné Promyšlení Buddhistického Materialism, James Mark Shields Apr 2019

Osvobození Jako Revoluční Praxe: Opĕtovné Promyšlení Buddhistického Materialism, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article, first published in English in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics 20 (2013), pp. 461–99, James Mark Shields analyzes the possibilities and problems of a “Buddhist materialism” constructed along Marxian lines, by focusing in particular on Buddhist and Marxist conceptions of “liberation.” Although it is only in recent decades that scholars have begun to reconsider and problematize Buddhist conceptions of “free- dom” and “agency,” the thought traditions of Asian Buddhism have for many centuries struggled with questions related to the issue of “liberation”—along with its fundamental ontological, epistemological and ethical implications. With the development of Marxist thought in …


Medieval Khmer Society: The Life And Times Of Jayavarman Vii (Ca. 1120–1218), Paul K. Nietupski Jan 2019

Medieval Khmer Society: The Life And Times Of Jayavarman Vii (Ca. 1120–1218), Paul K. Nietupski

2019 Faculty Bibliography

Jayavarman VII (ca. 1120–1218) is one of the best known Cambodian “Angkor” leaders, in part because he was able to unite the numerous small, fragmented Khmer Cambodian and Cham kingdoms of the day. He ruled his consolidated Khmer kingdom from 1181–1218, bringing the decentralized Khmer and Cham states together through political and military alliances. Religion, especially India-derived Brahmanism, or “Hinduism,” Mahāyāna Buddhism, and local Cambodian religion, was a key component of Khmer society. Over time different Khmer rulers endorsed one or more of the religious systems to their own advantage. Jayavarman VII was especially committed to Mahāyāna Buddhism, evidenced by …


“There Are No Dharmas Apart From The Dharma-Sphere”: Shakya Chokden’S Interpretation Of The Dharma-Sphere, Yaroslav Komarovski Jan 2019

“There Are No Dharmas Apart From The Dharma-Sphere”: Shakya Chokden’S Interpretation Of The Dharma-Sphere, Yaroslav Komarovski

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

As is well known to contemporary scholarship and demonstrated by the works contained in the present volume, the Tibetan term zhentong (gzhan stong, being empty of other) refers not to any one unanimous view or system of thought but to a wide variety of philosophical theories formed primarily in India and Tibet. Those theories are often contrasted with rival rangtong (rang stong, being empty of self)1 theories in their interpretations of reality, buddhahood, path, and other elements of the Buddhist worldiew. While many of those elements are equally open to the zhentong and rangtong interpretations, …


After The Fall: Tsuji Zennosuke And The Creation Of Bukkyōshugi Kokushi, James Mark Shields Dec 2018

After The Fall: Tsuji Zennosuke And The Creation Of Bukkyōshugi Kokushi, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

Tsuji Zennosuke 辻善之助 (1877–1955), the dominant figure in Buddhist historical scholarship in Japan from the 1930s until the mid-1950s, is known to have employed a broad range of sources in order to provide a comprehensive analysis of his subject. This essay examines Tsuji’s conception of Buddhist history in relation to the emer- gence of both National Historical Studies (kokushigaku 国史学) and so-called State Shintō (kokka shintō 国家神道) and argues against the image of Tsuji as an “objec- tive historian” resistant to nationalist trends in historical scholarship. In fact, Tsuji was involved in the creation of an alternative, “Buddhistic” national history, …


Thai Contextualized Art, Gregory P. Whitsett, Amy Whitsett Jul 2018

Thai Contextualized Art, Gregory P. Whitsett, Amy Whitsett

Journal of Adventist Mission Studies

"In the 1980s, a set of four murals depicting four specific and unique Adventist teachings and beliefs was commissioned by Pastor Clifton Maberly who was serving as a missionary in Thailand. His goal was to have these events depicted in a medium familiar to local Thai buddhists so they could wrestle with the new concepts without being distracted by Western art styles. His hope was that if Jesus, Satan and the angels could be depicted using characters similar to those already familiar to the Thai, the viewer would be better able to focus on and understand the truth portrayed in …


Reaching Thai Buddhists And Those With A Background In Thai Buddhist Beliefs, Warren A. Shipton, Jared Wright, Tonya Wright, Nilubon Srisai Jul 2018

Reaching Thai Buddhists And Those With A Background In Thai Buddhist Beliefs, Warren A. Shipton, Jared Wright, Tonya Wright, Nilubon Srisai

Journal of Adventist Mission Studies

"One of the greatest challenges for those working across cultures is to understand the unique features of the host culture and the dominant religious beliefs and practices found in the society represented. If this is to be done acceptably, the written and spoken language must be mastered and personal friendships formed with community members. Much damage has been done by Western missionaries arriving with preconceived ideas on evangelism taken from their home country and with an attitude of being holders of superior knowledge in many areas of thought beyond that held by the host culture. Catholic missionary activity has been …


Critical Contextualization: Case Studies From Cambodia, Bruce L. Bauer Jul 2018

Critical Contextualization: Case Studies From Cambodia, Bruce L. Bauer

Journal of Adventist Mission Studies

"Those of us involved in world mission must be at the forefront to encourage local people to develop local expressions of their faith. When I hear people rejoice about the fact that regardless of where they travel in the world the Sabbath school and church service order of worship, the songs sung, and the way of doing church is the same, I do not rejoice, I groan. For that means that the foreign visitor is comfortable, but how about the local people? Are they comfortable with the often foreignness of Adventist worship? We can and must do better to allow …


Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender May 2018

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …


起死回生(Resuscitation): Japan's Search For Machines And Their Meanings, Justin P. Mcdonnell May 2018

起死回生(Resuscitation): Japan's Search For Machines And Their Meanings, Justin P. Mcdonnell

Master's Projects and Capstones

Japan’s lost decade(s) ushered in a new era of economic and societal malaise, marked by a shrinking population, an increased proportion of elderly people, inequality, neo-nationalism(s), uncertainty, and isolation. This project seeks to understand how Japan is trying to address these issues and reconstruct itself from the lost decade(s) with the use of artificial intelligence (jinkou chihou) and robotics along with the societal implications of this technology. This interdisciplinary research utilizes innovative, historical narratives (Morris-Suzuki,1988, Hornyak 2006), and the socio-cultural milieu of Japan and its traditions (Allison 2013; Katsuno 2010) to further appreciate and acknowledge Japanese perspectives and …


Future Perfect: Tolstoy And The Structures Of Agrarian Buddhist Utopianism In Taishō Japan, James Mark Shields May 2018

Future Perfect: Tolstoy And The Structures Of Agrarian Buddhist Utopianism In Taishō Japan, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

This study focuses on the role played by the work of Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) in shaping socialism and agrarian-Buddhist utopianism in Japan. As Japanese translations of Tolstoy’s fiction and philosophy, and accounts of his life became more available at the end of the 19th century, his ideas on the individual, religion, society, and politics had a tremendous impact on the generation coming of age in the 1900s and his popularity grew among young intellectuals. One important legacy of Tolstoy in Japan is his particular concern with the peasantry and agricultural reform. Among those inspired by Tolstoy and the narodniki lifestyle, …


On The Politics And Conceptualization Of Gender Non-Conformity : Exploring Thailand’S Kathoey Population., Macey E. Mayes May 2018

On The Politics And Conceptualization Of Gender Non-Conformity : Exploring Thailand’S Kathoey Population., Macey E. Mayes

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the politics and conceptualization of gender in Thailand, drawing specifically on the Thai understanding of sex and gender with regard to the kathoey population. This work considers the solidification of a third-gender category and looks to the ways this solidification can inhibit the fluidity of gender and sexuality. It also analyzes the dangers of transnational advocacy and the superimposition of Western queer advocacy and theory on Thai gender identities. I approach this issue from an interdisciplinary framework that seeks to include historical, cultural, and theoretical perspectives. In examining anthropological research, critiques of …


Review Of John Whalen-Bridge, Tibet On Fire: Buddhism, Protest, And The Rhetoric Of Self-Immolation, Daniel S. Capper Jan 2018

Review Of John Whalen-Bridge, Tibet On Fire: Buddhism, Protest, And The Rhetoric Of Self-Immolation, Daniel S. Capper

Faculty Publications

Review of John Whalen-Bridge, Tibet on Fire: Buddhism, Protest, and the Rhetoric of Self-Immolation, in Journal of Contemporary Religion


Review Of Seeing Like The Buddha. Enlightenment Through Film By Francisca Cho, Ronald S. Green Jan 2018

Review Of Seeing Like The Buddha. Enlightenment Through Film By Francisca Cho, Ronald S. Green

Philosophy and Religious Studies

No abstract provided.


Korean Contributions To Japanese Buddhism, Ronald S. Green, Chanju Mun Jan 2018

Korean Contributions To Japanese Buddhism, Ronald S. Green, Chanju Mun

Philosophy and Religious Studies

No abstract provided.


Indian Foundations And Chinese Developments Of The Buddha Dharma, Ronald S. Green, Chanju Mun Jan 2018

Indian Foundations And Chinese Developments Of The Buddha Dharma, Ronald S. Green, Chanju Mun

Philosophy and Religious Studies

No abstract provided.