Cluster 1.1: From Oral to Digital

Cluster 1.1: From Oral to Digital

Cluster Leader: Yinggang Sun (Zhejiang University) – 2017 Chen Jinhua (UBC) – 2018 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 Continue reading

Cluster 1.2: Religion and Technology

Cluster 1.2: Religion and Technology

Cluster Leader: Marcus Bingenheimer, Temple University 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 Continue reading

Cluster 1.3: Market and Merit

Cluster 1.3: Market and Merit

Cluster leader: Susan Andrews, Mount Allison University and Youn-mi Kim (Ewha Womans University) 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 Continue reading

Cluster 1.4: Enriched Reading Practices

Cluster 1.4: Enriched Reading Practices

Cluster Leader:  Bryan Lowe, Princeton University and Lori Meeks, University of Southern California This cluster considers how people engaged with reading and writing in premodern Japan. While much attention to texts in Buddhist Studies focuses on elite male authors in the capital, our cluster attends to reading and writing by Continue reading

Cluster 1.5: Extended “Textual Communities”

Cluster 1.5: Extended “Textual Communities”

Cluster Leader: Jiang Wu, University of Arizona 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 Continue reading

Cluster 2.1: Authenticity and Authority

Cluster 2.1: Authenticity and Authority

Cluster Leader: Jinhua Jia, Hong Kong Polytechnic University The field visits of Cluster 2.1 have been focusing on the historical sites of the traditional Chinese state sacrificial system dedicated to spirits of major mountains and waters, including Five Marchmounts 五嶽, Five Strongholds 五鎮, Four Seas 四海, and Four Waterways 四瀆, which formed a part Continue reading

Cluster 2.2 “Secondary” Producers, “Primary” Roles

Cluster 2.2 “Secondary” Producers, “Primary” Roles

Cluster Leader: George Keyworth, University of Saskatchewan The field visits of Cluster 2.2 were designed to focus on investigating the “primary” roles that “secondary” producers—Khitans, Jurchens, Koreans and Japanese—played in transmitting, editing, venerating and preserving Buddhist literature in Chinese during the medieval period in East Asia (ca. 10th – 15th Continue reading

Cluster 2.3: Continuous Revelations

Cluster 2.3: Continuous Revelations

Cluster Leader: Vincent Goossaert (École pratique des hautes études) and Barend ter Haar, University of Hamburg How do we map out and interpret the enormous and ever-expanding traditions of authoritative texts produced via revelation practices (e.g. spirit-writing)? The mechanisms by which new texts are actually created and legitimated as a Continue reading

Cluster 2.5: From the Canonical to the Post-Canonical

Cluster 2.5: From the Canonical to the Post-Canonical

  Cluster Leaders: Toshinori Ochiai, International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies (ICPBS) and George Keyworth, University of Saskatchewan The field visits of Cluster 2.5 were led by Dr. Toshinori Ochiai of the ICPBS in Tokyo in 2017 and then by Dr. George Keyworth in 2018 and 2019 in tandem with Continue reading

Cluster 3.1: Multicultural Dunhuang: Manuscripts and Paintings

Cluster 3.1: Multicultural Dunhuang: Manuscripts and Paintings

Cluster Leader: Imre Galambos, University of Cambridge/Zhejiang University and Michelle Wang, Georgetown University The research cluster “Multicultural Dunhuang: Manuscripts and Paintings” examines the connections between Dunhuang manuscripts and paintings, particularly during the tenth century. A central aim of the project is to bring together rising scholars of paintings and of Continue reading

Cluster 3.3: Texts in Statues

Cluster 3.3: Texts in Statues

Cluster Leader: James Robson, Harvard University The main goals of the “Texts in Statues” cluster are to identify, catalogue, and study all statues from China, Korea, and Japan with manuscripts and texts that have been interred inside of them.  Included in the scope of this project will be statues in situ in Continue reading