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 2.2 “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 2.5: 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 3.3: 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

Cluster 4.1: Talismans and Talisman Cultures in Contemporary Vietnam: Meaning, Making, Medium

Cluster 4.1: Talismans and Talisman Cultures in Contemporary Vietnam: Meaning, Making, Medium

Cluster Leader: Cynthea Bogel, Kyushu University Co-cluster leader:  Hien Thi Nguyen, Vietnam National University This cluster project investigates the religious, historical, material, practical, and iconographic dimensions of talismans/amulets in contemporary contexts in Vietnam, with particular attention to talismans that share Buddhist and non-Buddhist functions, including those from Daoist, shaman, Shinto Continue reading