Dear Buddhist Studies community and supporters,
I missed updating you in June and although summer is now well underway, there's plenty to report.
Firstly, we're looking forward to a talk
this Friday, July 16, by our doctoral candidate Tony Scott,
"The Milindapañha and the Fifth and Sixth Councils in Myanmar," as part of the After the Rains | Theravada Studies Talks series.
The
Milindapañha (
Questions of King Milinda) is an important but enigmatic text in Theravada Buddhist history, and in this talk Tony will explore how the work was interpreted in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of South and Southeast Asia.
And congrats to two more of our Buddhist Studies doctoral candidates...
Amber Moore published an article, “Abodes of the Vajra-Yoginīs: Mount Maṇicūḍa and Paśupatikṣetra as envisaged in the
Tridalakamala and
Maṇiśailamahāvadāna,” in the
European Bulletin of Himalayan Research (Winter 2020: 55).
Rachelle Saruya was awarded the 2020/21 UTM Historical Studies Graduate Fellowship for her project "Autonomous Beings and Docile Bodies: Myanmar-Burmese Buddhist Nuns, Educational Practices, and Rituals in Training," and she has also been awarded a 2021 ACLS/Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation
Dissertation Fellowship in Buddhist Studies. Wow, congratulations, Amber and Rachelle!!
In faculty news, we're so happy to report that Dr. Rory Lindsay has just begun a new appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion here. Dr. Lindsay holds a 2018 PhD in South Asian Studies from Harvard University and has been a visiting scholar at the University of California Santa Barbara for the past two years. A scholar in Buddhist Studies with a focus on Tibetan Buddhism, Dr. Lindsay’s book
Saving the Dead: Tibetan Funerary Rituals in the Tradition of the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana Tantra is forthcoming this year. Dr. Lindsay is also a BA and MA graduate of the U of T. As a scholar of Buddhism and a Tibetan language instructor, Dr. Lindsay will bring rich research and teaching expertise to our programs. Welcome (back), Rory! We're looking forward to working with you in the coming years.
Our
Teaching Buddhism, Race and Racism project, led by Drs Adeana McNicoll and Ann Gleig with support from Molly Mignault, is winding down (for the moment). Materials to be released on
teachingbuddhism.net include a comprehensive bibliography of resources on the topic plus some amazingly rich, new video interviews with Buddhist Studies scholars. Keep an eye on the
Teaching Buddhism, Race, and Racism YouTube playlist or teachingbuddhism.net for updates to this series in the next couple of weeks.
Our
How Do You Do It? series, in which we ask Buddhist Studies scholars to talk about how they manage some of the behind-the-scenes tasks in our field, released two new videos recently:
University of Arizona's Dr Rae Erin Dachille shares her work in
Using Images in the Classroom, and Stanford University's Dr Trent Walker talks about
Using Music in Buddhist Studies teaching and research. An our
Step Forward series, on academic culture in the field, also has a few new - and powerful - videos aimed especially at graduate students and junior scholars.
Looking ahead, the
Buddhism and Breath Summit presentations are now being processed, each one addressing an aspect of how Buddhist presentations of breath, “wind” or “life force” (
prāṇa in Sanskrit,
qi in Chinese, or
rlung in Tibetan, for example) have influenced contemplative, philosophical, and medical theories and practices in Buddhist traditions. Featuring pre-recorded presentations by scholars and practitioners plus supplementary educational resources, the Summit will be publicly and freely available online in Fall 2021. Co-organized by me and Pierce Salguero, this event is co-sponsored by the Centre for Buddhist Studies and Jivaka.net.
And finally - for now - we're also looking forward to a lecture series in 2021-22 on
Buddhism and Posthumanism. Stay tuned for more, as these and other plans develop for the coming year.
