April Updates

Dear friends and supporters:

We have several exciting programs and events to share with you. We are continuing to produce content that supports the continued growth of Buddhist studies and are in the process of developing our program for the next academic year. Stay tuned for updates!

In our programming schedule, we have one more major event scheduled for the Spring. The contributors to our Buddhism and posthumanism series will return on May 19 at 3pm for a round-table event on Zoom. We encourage you to join this conversation so you can share in the ongoing discussion about how Buddhist studies scholarship can and should address climate change. If you missed any of the talks, you can check out the YouTube playlist of past talks in the series. We are grateful that Henry Shiu, Shi Wu De Assistant Professor in Chinese Buddhist Studies at Emmanuel College in the University of Toronto, will join our panel for this event.

Frances Garrett and Tony Scott are collaborating on a podcast called Footnotes that gives the listener a brief summary and commentary on Buddhist studies publications. Their aim is to increase access to scholarship for a wider audience. Betsy Moss and Sarah Richardson continue producing new interviews for The Circled Square podcast that focuses on the various approaches and methods used by instructors of Buddhist studies courses.

The impact of the pandemic and the turn to remote learning (and almost everything else!) has had a significant negative impact on the mental health and well-being of many students, faculty, and staff. Responding to this need, Frances Garrett created the Windvane project with support from eCampus Ontario. On this website you will find many videos and short readings that you can use or share with your colleagues and students.

Our students continue to do research, some are traveling overseas, and others are continuing to develop their language skills here in Toronto. We hope you are well as the semester winds down.

With gratitude, SeungJung Kim (Director) and Betsy Moss (Coordinator)

Posthumanism and Buddhism

Buddhism and Posthumanism Roundtable

Thursday, May 19, 3:00–4:30 pm

Please join us for a Zoom meeting for the and final sixth installment of this year’s series on posthumanism and Buddhism. After a year of thought-provoking presentations and rich conversation, we invite you to join our our speakers for a round-table conversation. What common threads did you hear? How did these research presentations and discussions impact your thinking about the anthropocene and climate change? What do Buddhist studies researchers say about the place of humans in multispecies environments?

We are deeply grateful that Henry Shiu, Shi Wu De Assistant Professor in Chinese Buddhist Studies at Emmanuel College in the University of Toronto, will join our panel for this event.

If you need to refresh your memories about the series or perhaps you missed one of the previous talks, please visit our YouTube playlist for video recordings of the previous talks.

This event is co-sponsored by the Religion in the Public Sphere initiative of the Department for the Study of Religion in the University of Toronto. The series is organized by Rory Lindsay, Assistant Professor, and Frances Garrett, Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto.

Podcast

Buddhist Studies Footnotes

Footnotes is a series of short lectures or conversations on research in the field of Buddhist Studies. Created by Frances Garrett, a professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto, with co-host Tony Scott, most episodes are summaries or discussions of articles or book chapters from academic work in the field, with some episodes featuring guest lectures from academic events. We aim to make Buddhist Studies research freely accessible to students and the public. Footnotes has been made possible by a grant from eCampusOntario. Audio editing has been done by Jesse Whitty and Frances Garrett.

Episodes are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast

Recent Episodes of The Circled Square

Episode 19 – Jan Willis: Stories from a Black, Baptist, and Buddhist Teacher
Episode 18 – Todd Lewis: Social Context and the Power of Imagination
Episode 17 – Susie Andrews: Building Others Up

Presentation

Anthony Scott, Buddhist Biopower and Mass-lay Meditation in Myanmar

Wednesday, April 20, 2022, 1:30–3:00 pm

Anthony Scott will give a presentations focused on Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health in the New College Senior Doctoral Fellow Speakers Series 2021/22.

Register to receive a Zoom link.

Language Training

2022 Annual Summer School on the Languages and Literatures of Jainism

The 2022 Annual Summer School on the Languages and Literatures of Jainism will take place at the Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto from August 2nd to August 7th 2022 in person, with the option to participate online as well. This year's Summer School will focus on reading and contextualizing literature in Apabhraṃśa, an understudied but important classical literary language in which Jain authors in particular wrote numerous poetic works. The Summer School will provide in-depth knowledge of Apabhraṃśa language, prosody and literary genres and discuss the important contribution by Jains to this lesser studied part of India's literary culture.

The daily reading sessions will be led by Prof. Eva De Clercq from Ghent University (Belgium) who is a specialist of Apabhraṃśa and of Jain literature in general, and who recently published the first English translation of the oldest extant Apabhraṃśa work (Murty Classical Library of India). Besides the reading sessions there will be guest lectures on Jain Apabhraṃśa literature and its place within Indian classical literature as well as social activities such as a visit to a local Jain temple.

Each day will consist of two sessions: a morning reading session on a text that will be continued for the duration of the workshop and an afternoon session in which we will explore a wider variety of Jain and non-Jain Apabhraṃśa texts. In addition, several days will have an afternoon lecture. Since the Summer School is language focused, we ask participants to have an intermediate knowledge of Sanskrit, Prakrit or Old-Hindi.

There are no fees associated with attending the workshop itself, and funding for room and board is available for a limited number of graduate students from outside the GTA. In order to secure the health and safety for all participants we ask of everyone to be fully vaccinated.

Interested candidates for this Summer School should apply by sending their CV and a 200-word motivation detailing how this workshop helps them in their research. This is asked of both in-person as well as online participants. Candidates who apply for in-person participation should also provide proof of vaccination. The deadline for applications is May 20th 2022. You will receive a response from us by May 30th 2022.

Please send your applications as well as any further inquiries to Heleen De Jonckheere.

Celebrating success

Frances Garrett's project Windvane featured in Arts & Science News

“As we are blown by waves of grief or fires of rage, a global pandemic, climate disaster and social injustice, can we channel our energies into strengths?”

Associate professor of Buddhist and Tibetan studies, and former director of the Ho Centre at U of T, Frances Garrett, gathered the collection of videos and other resources to help students develop their self-awareness of their own mental health. The project's website Windvane - Paths to Wellbeing has resources to help everyone cultivate awareness and take action. Instructors will find the sections on designing courses for student flourishing and especially useful.

Read more about this amazing resource in the Arts & Science News in March.

The University of Toronto operates on the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit River, and it is still home to many Indigenous people. We are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.