This cluster project examines ways in which the transition from manuscript to print and the development of a range of technologies and reading techniques in premodern Asia may inform our understanding of the current global transition from print to digital media. We will focus on transformations in the culture of writing and reading in East Asia as a “distant mirror” (in the words of the European medievalist Barbara Tuchman) to reflect on current developments in the digital humanities and our changing relationships to texts.
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The cluster “Religion and Technology” investigated how emerging technologies in the digital humanities can contribute to the study of religion in East Asia. In a series of workshops Simon Wiles (Stanford CIDR), Oliver Streiter (National University of Kaohsiung), and Marcus Bingenheimer (Temple University) taught the foundations of GIS-based surveys and map creation (2017), historical social network analysis (2018), and GIS and aerial photography with drones (2019). Workshops included theory and classroom training in the use of software tools as well as intensive fieldwork.
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Women’s significance in the economic life of East Asian religions is widely recognized but not yet well understood. This is in part because sources foregrounding their participation in this sphere very often remain outside official canons. Histories of the intersections between economics and religion in the region oftentimes prioritize monks, monasteries, male courtiers and rulers because these are the sites and settings that dominate the sources with which we have been working.
The From the Ground Up “Market and Merit” research cluster endeavours to fill this scholarly lacuna, reconstructing the diverse ways women have been active in the economics of religious life in East Asia.
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How did people encounter and engage with texts under conditions of rapid dissemination and constantly increasing volume, in various religious traditions in East Asia? How did East Asia traditions celebrate or control reading as a religious practice?
This cluster will support research that addresses three general topics in different periods of EA religious history:
(1) The relationship between esoteric knowledge, printing, and public dissemination;
(2) The role of commentarial traditions, print catalogues, anthologies, digests, and other reference works in East Asian religious traditions;
(3) The relationships between texts and popular teaching.
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This cluster investigates the ways in which reading and writing the religious book in East Asia structured and defined communities of real or imagined readers, and how the economic and technological dimensions of the production of texts affected and even created communities and institutions.
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