Institution: University of Southern California
Jesse Drian is a PhD. candidate in the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on issues of intellectual history, literature, and sacred space in medieval Japanese religions. His dissertation examines how the religious imagination of Itsukushima Shrine developed through the networked production of temple and shrine origin narratives (jisha engi) and shared bodies of knowledge on regional deities. Exploring the reading, circulation, and rewriting of origin narratives, the dissertation retraces the work of scholarly monks to unravel and reassemble interconnections relating numerous gods and sacred spaces with one another.
