H-Net Notifications

Table of Contents

1. MEETING> Hagiography Society kick-off event, Sunday 20 Nov., 1-2pm, AAR San Antonio
2. JOBS> H-Net Job Guide Weekly Report For H-Buddhism: 17 October - 24 October
3. NEW BOOK> Numinous Awareness Is Never Dark: The Korean Buddhist Master Chinul’s Excerpts on Zen Practice, by Robert Buswell
4. NEW BOOK> Doctrine and Practice in Medieval Korean Buddhism: The Collected Works of Uichon, by Richard McBride

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MEETING> Hagiography Society kick-off event, Sunday 20 Nov., 1-2pm, AAR San Antonio

by Oliver Freiberger

Dear colleagues,
I've been asked to forward this announcement. Please see below.
Best,
Oliver
Dr. Oliver Freiberger
Associate Professor of Asian Studies and Religious Studies
The University of Texas at Austin
of@austin.utexas.edu

Dear scholars of Buddhism:
As past president of the Hagiography Society  http://www.hagiographysociety.org/ I write on behalf of current president Neslihan Senocak (Columbia University), to invite you to the HS's initial event as an Affiliated Organization of the AAR.
We are eager to make connections across the traditions to explore comparative and parallel practices and concepts in the study of saints' cults, relics, pilgrimages, texts, and socio-economic and political impacts. At this first meeting we hope to formulate panel topics for the 2017 AAR conference that would encourage abstracts from new and established scholars representing different traditions.
If you are planning on attending the AAR's San Antonio conference and are interested in the HS gathering, please let me know at this address: akfrazier@austin.utexas.edu. We very much look forward to meeting you, learning about your work, collaborating with you at the AAR and other conferences, and welcoming your contributions to the book series, "Sanctity in Global Perspective" http://www.hagiographysociety.org/?page_id=80
We'll meet in the conference hotel, the Mariott Riverwalk, in the Bowie Room. In the Program Book, this is session number P20-201.
with warmest best wishes,
Alison Frazier
Associate Professor, History & Religious Studies
Graduate Director, History
University of TX at Austin

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JOBS> H-Net Job Guide Weekly Report For H-Buddhism: 17 October - 24 October

by Gregory Adam Scott

The following jobs were posted to the H-Net Job Guide from
17 October 2016 to 24 October 2016.  These job postings are included here based on the categories selected by the list editors for H-Buddhism.  See the H-Net Job Guide website at
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/ for more information.  To contact the Job Guide,
write to jobguide@mail.h-net.msu.edu, or call +1-517-432-5134 between 9 am and 5 pm US Eastern time.


ANTHROPOLOGY

University of Southern California - Postdoctoral Scholar, USC Society
of Fellows in the Humanities
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53916


ART AND ART HISTORY

Encyclopaedia Britannica - Assistant Editor - Arts and Humanities
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53954

Harvard University - Mahindra Humanities Center Postdoctoral
Fellowship
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53964

University of Hong Kong - Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, Art
historian specializing in Chinese material culture
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53911

University of Hong Kong - Tenure-Track Assistant Professor,
Contemporary art history
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53912

University of Virginia - Lecturer in Renaissance Art and
Architectural History - Three Semesters 2017-2018
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53936

Yale University - South Asian Art Historian
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53950

Yale University - African Art Historian
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53952


ASIAN HISTORY / STUDIES

Ithaca College - Diversity Scholars Fellowship in the School of
Humanities and Sciences
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53923

Missouri Southern State University - Assistant Professor, Modern
World History
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53963

North Carolina State University - Assistant Professor- History of
Agriculture
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53929

University of British Columbia - Two Fellowships in East Asian
Buddhism
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53878

University of Hawaii - Manoa - Assistant or Associate Professor of
Modern Korean History
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53941


DIGITAL HUMANITIES

Bergische Universitat Wuppertal - Universitatsprofessur fur Digital
Humanities (Historisch-kulturwissenschaftliche
Informationsverarbeitung)
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53956


EAST ASIAN HISTORY / STUDIES

Freie Universitaet Berlin - Postdoctoral Fellow (Social Sciences,
main research focus: Korea)
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53913

Missouri Southern State University - Assistant Professor, Modern
World History
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53963

Princeton University - Chinese Studies Librarian
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53966

University of British Columbia - Two Fellowships in East Asian
Buddhism
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53878

University of Hawaii - Manoa - Assistant or Associate Professor of
Modern Korean History
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53941

University of Hong Kong - Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Gender
History
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53910

University of Southern California - Postdoctoral Scholar, USC Society
of Fellows in the Humanities
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53916


JAPANESE HISTORY / STUDIES

Missouri Southern State University - Assistant Professor, Modern
World History
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53963

New York University Arts and Science - FACULTY POSITION, MODERN
JAPANESE HISTORY
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53946

University of Florida - Assistant Professor
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53938


RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND THEOLOGY

University of Southern California - Postdoctoral Scholar, USC Society
of Fellows in the Humanities
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53916


NONE

City University of New York- Borough of Manhattan Community College -
Development Specialist
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53953

The HistoryMakers - Oral History Researcher
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53968

The HistoryMakers - Video Oral History Researcher/Processor
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53969

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NEW BOOK> Numinous Awareness Is Never Dark: The Korean Buddhist Master Chinul’s Excerpts on Zen Practice, by Robert Buswell

by Charles Muller

Numinous Awareness Is Never Dark: The Korean Buddhist Master Chinul’s Excerpts on Zen Practice, by Robert E. Buswell, Jr.
University of Hawaii Press

352pp. October 2016

Cloth - Price: $68.00ISBN: 978-0-8248-6739-3

http://www.uhawaiipress.com/p-9701-9780824867393.aspx

Numinous Awareness Is Never Dark examines the issue of whether enlightenment in Zen Buddhism is sudden or gradual—that is, something intrinsic to the mind that is achieved in a sudden flash of insight or something extrinsic to it that must be developed through a sequential series of practices. This “sudden/gradual issue” was one of the crucial debates that helped forge the Zen school in East Asia, and the Korean Zen master Chinul’s (1158–1210) magnum opus, Excerpts, offers one of the most thorough treatments of it in all of premodern Buddhist literature. According to Chinul’s analysis, enlightenment is both sudden and gradual. Zen practice must begin with a sudden awakening to the “numinous awareness”—the “sentience,” or buddha-nature—that is inherent in all “sentient” beings. Such an awareness does not need to be developed but must simply be recognized (or better “re-cognized”), through the unmediated experience of insight. Even after this initial awakening, however, deeply engrained proclivities of thought and conduct may continue to disturb the practitioner; these can only be removed gradually as his or her practice matures. Chinul’s “sudden awakening/gradual cultivation” soteriology became emblematic of the Buddhist tradition in Korea.
Excerpts, translated here in its entirety by the preeminent Western specialist in the Korean Buddhist tradition, goes on to examine Chinul’s treatments of many of the quintessential practices of Zen Buddhism, including nonconceptualization, or no-thought, and the concurrent development of meditation and wisdom, as well as, for the first time in Korean Zen, “examining meditative topics” (kanhwa Sŏn)—what we in the West know better as kōans, after its later Japanese analogues. Fitting this new technique into his preferred soteriological schema of sudden awakening/gradual cultivation was no simple task for Chinul.
Numinous Awareness Is Never Dark offers an extensive study of the contours of the sudden/gradual debate in Buddhist thought and practice and traces the influence of Chinul’s analysis of this issue throughout the history of the Korean tradition. Copiously annotated, the work contains extensive selections from the two traditional Korean commentaries to the text. In Buswell’s treatment, Chinul’s Excerpts emerges as the single most influential work written by a Korean Buddhist author.

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NEW BOOK> Doctrine and Practice in Medieval Korean Buddhism: The Collected Works of Uichon, by Richard McBride

by Charles Muller

 Doctrine and Practice in Medieval Korean Buddhism: The Collected Works of Uichon, translated, annotated, and with an introduction by Richard D. McBride II (November 2016)

344pp. November 2016

Cloth - Price: $68.00ISBN: 978-0-8248-6743-0

http://www.uhawaiipress.com/p-9683-9780824867430.aspx

Ŭich’ŏn (1055–1101) is recognized as a Buddhist master of great stature in the East Asian tradition. Born a prince in the medieval Korean state of Koryŏ (960–1279), he traveled to Song China (960–1279) to study Buddhism and later compiled and published the first collection of East Asian exegetical texts. According to the received scholarly tradition, after returning to Korea, Ŭich’ŏn left the Hwaŏm (Huayan) school to found a new Ch’ŏnt’ae (Tiantai) school when he realized that the synthesis between doctrinal learning and meditative practice in the latter would help bring together the discordant sects of Koryŏ Buddhism. In the late twentieth century, however, scholars began to question the assertion that Ŭich’ŏn forsook one school for another, arguing that his writings assembled in The Collected Works of State Preceptor Taegak (Taegak kuksa munjip) do not portray a committed sectarian but a monk dedicated to developing a sophisticated and rigorous system of monastic education that encompassed all Buddhist intellectual traditions.

In this first comprehensive study of Ŭich’ŏn’s life and work in English, Richard McBride presents translations of select lectures, letters, essays, and poetry from The Collected Works to provide a more balanced view of Ŭich’ŏn’s philosophy of life and understanding of key Buddhist teachings. The translations center on the monk’s activities in the pan-East Asian Buddhist world and his compilation of scholarly texts, writings related to his interactions with royalty, and correspondence with his Chinese mentor, Jinshui Jingyuan (1011–1088). By incorporating Ŭich’ŏn’s work associated with doctrinal Buddhism and his poetry, McBride clearly shows that even in his most personal work Ŭich’ŏn did not abandon Hwaŏm teachings for those of the Ch’ŏnt’ae but rather he encouraged monks to blend the best learning from all doctrinal traditions with meditative practice.

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