Cluster 1.3: Market and Merit

Cluster 1.3: Market and Merit

Cluster leader: Susan Andrews, Mount Allison 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 of the intersections between economics and 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 Summary: 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 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 2.3: 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 3.1: Multicultural Dunhuang: Manuscripts and Paintings

Cluster 3.1: Multicultural Dunhuang: Manuscripts and Paintings

Cluster Leader: Imre Galambos, University of Cambridge and Michelle Wang, Georgetown University The 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 manuscripts in Continue reading

Cluster 3.4: Typologies of Text and Image Relations (cliffs/caves)

Cluster 3.4: Typologies of Text and Image Relations (cliffs/caves)

Cluster Leader: Christoph Anderl, University of Ghent This cluster investigates the development of specific patterns of text-image relations in East Asian Buddhist iconography, with a focus on Chinese sites but also including data from Buddhist sites in other Asian countries. We attempt to analyze how textual and visual media interact 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