Adamek, Wendi

Wendi Adamek is an Associate Professor and the Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies in the Department of Classics and Religion. She  received her undergraduate, M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University. Her research and teaching interests center on Chinese religions and East Asian Buddhism, and she has taught previously at the University of Iowa, Barnard College, Columbia University, and the University of Sydney. She was a Fulbright Research Fellow at Kyoto University (1990) and Peking University (2004), a Stanford Humanities Center Fellow (2009), and also received research grants from the Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai (Numata), Jacob K. Javits Foundation, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, and the United States National Endowment for the Humanities. Her first book The Mystique of Transmission (2007), which won an Award for Excellence from the American Academy of Religion, explores a controversial eighth century Chan/Zen community in Sichuan. Included in the Translations from Asian Classics series of Columbia University Press, her most recent publication is The Teachings of Master Wuzhu: Zen and Religion of No-Religion (2011), which takes up provocative themes from her first book and presents her translation of a little-known Chan/Zen text in an accessible manner. Her current book project, Practicescape: The Buddhists of Baoshan, centers on a seventh-century eschatologically oriented community in Henan. Other interests include Daoism, Buddhist art, forest restoration, network theory, and environmental literature. A future book project on environmental and social issues is underway.