Table of Contents
- LECTURE> Internal Worms and Bodily Winds in a
Buddhist Sutra (Kyoto)
- CALL FOR PAPERS> 2019 AAR BUDDHISM UNIT
LECTURE>
Internal Worms and Bodily Winds in a Buddhist Sutra (Kyoto)
by Robert Kritzer
Robert Kritzer and Ishikawa Mie
will give a two-part presentation on worms and winds in Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra.Venue: Kyoto Notre Dame University, 1 Minaminonogami-cho, Shimogamo, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan. (Access: Karasuma subway line, Kitayama Station exit 1; City Bus 4, Nonogami-cho)
Date: March 6, 2019
Time: 1-2:30 p.m.
Kritzer's talk will be in English, while Ishikawa's will be in Japanese.
CALL
FOR PAPERS> 2019 AAR BUDDHISM UNIT
by James Robson
Dear Buddhism Unit Members:The AAR has recently opened its PAPERS system (https://papers.aarweb.org/content/welcome). This is the online system used for session and paper submissions the Annual Meeting of the AAR to be held in 2019 San Diego, California (November 23-26, 2019).
The deadline for all AAR submission this year is Monday, March 4, 2019, at 5:00 pm Eastern Standard Time.
Appended below is the Buddhism Unit Call for Papers for the 2019 Annual Meeting of the AAR. PLEASE MAKE SPECIAL NOTE OF THE SESSION FORMATS. Proposals are due by March 4th and must be submitted online through the PAPERS system. If you have any questions about the submission process please feel free to contact James Robson (jrobson@fas.harvard.edu) or Reiko Ohnuma (reiko.ohnuma@dartmouth.edu). We look forward to seeing you in San Diego in November 2019.
Best,
James Robson & Reiko Ohnuma
AAR Buddhism Unit Co-Chairs
2019 AAR BUDDHISM UNIT CALL FOR PAPERS
The Buddhism Unit welcomes proposals for papers sessions, individual papers, and roundtables in all areas of the study of Buddhism. To encourage greater exchange among the various subfields within Buddhist Studies, we are particularly interested in sessions that confront enduring problems in the study of Buddhism, raise important theoretical or methodological issues, and or bring fresh materials or perspectives to bear on themes of broad interest.
This year, we ask you to keep in mind the new format of the AAR Annual Meeting and the Unit’s new allotment of sessions—which is as follows (we will choose either Option A or Option B after we evaluate the proposals that come in):
(Option A) Two 2.5-hour sessions, one 2-hour session, and three 90-minute
sessions
(Option B) One 2.5-hour session, one 2-hour session, and five 90-minute
sessions
(with either option) One additional 90-minute session through cosponsorship
with another unit
We invite proposals for 2.5-hour sessions, 2-hour sessions, and 90-minute sessions. In comparison to previous years, however, there will be a significant decrease in the number of 2.5-hour sessions available and a significant increase in the number of 90-minute sessions available. Please keep this in mind in formulating your proposals. As always, we encourage new and innovative formats.
Below are some of the themes that our members have proposed for next year. If you are interested in contributing to a proposal on one of these topics, please contact the organizer directly.
● Dharmic Aspirations, Poetic Conversations: Scenes of Ethical Instruction in Buddhist Literature, Contacts: Alexis Brown (Harvard University): ALB931@mail.harvard.edu and Elizabeth Angowski (Earlham College): angowel@earlham.edu - This panel puts analyses of dialogues in Buddhist literature in conversation with one another in an effort to see how dialogues work to engage readers and affect them in ethically significant ways. Inspired by Mark Jordan's work on "scenes of instruction" in Christian ethics, each paper focuses not only on the contents of conversations, but also on the time, place, and circumstances of a dialogue to show how all that figures in inter-character relations may serve as both the means and the substance of ethical teaching.
● Buddhism and Disability Studies, Contact: Justin Fifield (Trinity College): justin.fifield@trincoll.edu -Disability Studies was founded on a critical intervention into the biomedicalization of bodily impairment, setting forth a social model of disability that could overturn oppressive conditions for the disabled. A coalitional intersectionality with feminism, critical race theory, Queer Studies, and Animal Studies has pushed the field beyond the social model into exciting new areas, such as epistemology—what is now called cripistemology— postcolonial studies, critical culture studies, and a new historicism that looks beyond representation to chart how the disabled body has historically structured knowledge systems about all bodies. This panel aims to cultivate a needed and overdue engagement between Disability Studies and Buddhist Studies. It calls for papers on Buddhism and disability from a variety of historical, social, and cultural perspectives. Papers should explicitly engage with theory from Disability Studies and, ideally, a political program of overturning systems of oppression, in line with the AAR’s 2019 presidential theme of scholarly engagement in public spheres.
● Polemics and Problematization, Contact: Rae Dachille (University of Arizona): raedachille@email.arizona.edu - How have Buddhists created the conditions for generating diverse solutions to common problems, problems with philosophical, political, practical, and ontological dimensions? The rich polemical traditions of Buddhism have intrigued scholars, providing platforms for engaging with the socio-political and economic dimensions of Buddhist life. However, the sectarian dimensions of Buddhist polemics have often been overemphasized, obscuring the possibility
for locating openings in Buddhist discourses for productive exchange. While traditions like philosophical debate provide opportunities to garner prestige and perform tradition, they are also part of a broader pedagogical program. This program involves techniques of assuming the opponents’ views to clarify your own as well as charged and dynamic progress toward the mutual clarification of ideas. In a 1984 interview on his own relationship to politics, Michel Foucault critiqued the manner in which polemics obstructs the possibility for dialogue. He proposed “problematization” as an alternative model for addressing challenging issues. What potential does “problematization” promise for enriching our approach to Buddhist thought? This panel engages Foucault’s definition of “thought” as “freedom in relation to what one does, the motion by which one detaches from it, establishes it as an object, and reflects on it as a problem.” The papers will reevaluate Buddhist polemical encounters as well as consider the obstacles and possibilities for exchange in the university classroom, and the engagement of Buddhist ideas in contemporary public spaces.
● Buddhism and Media, Contact: Brooke Schedneck (Rhodes College), schedneckb@rhodes.edu -How are Buddhism, Buddhist monks, and Buddhist scandals portrayed in local and global media? This panel aims to provide a comparative perspective to these question with presentations analyzing different countries.
● Later Tiantai Buddhism in China, Contact: Lang Chen (Hong Kong Polytechnic University): lang.chen@polyu.edu.hk -This panel will bring together papers on Tiantai Buddhism after the Song Dynasty down to the present day. (Co-sponsored with the Chinese Religions Unit).
● Contributions of Asian Immigrant Buddhists to the West, Contact: Trung Huynh (University of Huston): thuynh28@cougarnet.uh.edu
● Innovations in Buddhist Monastic Education and the Monastic Curriculum Throughout the Buddhist World, Contact: Manuel López (New College of Florida): mlopezzafra@ncf.edu
● Buddhism & Digital Humanities, Contact: Jann Ronis (Buddhist Digital Resource Center): jann@tbrc.org
● The Kālacakra Tradition in India and beyond, Contact: Vesna Wallace (UCSB): vwallace@religion.ucsb.edu
● Buddhism and Nationalism, Contact: Rachel Pang (Davidson College): rhpang@davidson.edu - This panel seeks papers on the relationship between Buddhism and Nationalism in different cultural contexts.
● Representations of Buddhism in Contemporary Japanese Literature and Media Papers would discuss various aspects of Buddhism (or Japanese religions) as characterized in particular books, movies, anime, manga, online environments, etc. These might include, for example, any of Genyū Sokyū's novels, Zazen Girl by Taguchi Randy, Yumemakura Baku's series on Kūkai or the 2017 movie based on it, Legend of the Demon Cat, anime series (and manga) such as Saints Young Men, manga depicting founders of religious traditions and other Buddhists (e.g., the 2018 manga Zen: Shaku Sōen), etc. Papers could also focus on Buddhism in the writings of Ishimure Michiko, who passed in February 2018. Ronald Green: rgreen@coastal.edu
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