Table of Contents
- CONFERENCE) Writing the Region: Knowledge, Practice and Power in South Asia (Princeton South Asia Conference, April 17-18 2020)
- Buddhist Pedagogy Events at AAR
- Student Query
- AAR> Buddhist Philosophy Unit panels in San Diego
CONFERENCE) Writing the Region: Knowledge, Practice and Power in South Asia (Princeton South Asia Conference, April 17-18 2020)
by Niharika Yadav
Your network editor has reposted this from H-Announce. The byline reflects the original authorship.
Type:
Call for Papers
Date:
January 5, 2020
Location:
New Jersey, United States
Subject Fields:
South Asian History / Studies, Asian History / Studies
Princeton South Asia Conference, April 17-18 2020
Writing the Region: Knowledge, Practice and Power in South Asia
Submission Deadline: January 5, 2020
Recent scholarship on borderlands, frontiers, and wider networks of the Indian Ocean has displaced the long-standing centrality of states, and offered us new ways to imagine South Asia. Networks and processes that transcend state borders coexist with popular imaginations and practices that are shaped in resistance to them. Thus, while some regionalities transcend boundaries, others are constituted by their sense of difference, separation, and autonomy. The 2020 Princeton South Asia Conference engages the question of region by foregrounding the overlapping, contradictory, and contested processes shaping regional identities in South Asia. Using this theme as a starting point, the conference explores questions such as: How have the political, social, and ethical been imagined across South Asian regions and languages? And, how does the translation and movement of ideas and practices across regions lead, in turn, to the creation of new regional identities and attachments?
The trajectories of state and popular politics in South Asia have been shaped historically by diverse forms of regional assertions. Today, as majoritarian nationalisms become increasingly hegemonic, the conference encourages participants to consider new genealogies of South Asia’s plural and contesting regionalities. We seek to understand the region through its intersections with the state, but also to go beyond the rationalities of states and their archives. We especially invite research that examines regions through textual and visual sources in South Asian languages in both historical and contemporary contexts.
The ninth annual Princeton South Asia Conference will bring together early career scholars (advanced graduate students and postdoctoral researchers) across disciplines that engage with South Asia. In keeping with the theme of the conference, we invite papers that engage with South Asia in a broad sense, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Nepal, the Maldives, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Myanmar or Burma, India, and transnational and diasporic spaces. Papers may engage, but need not limit themselves to, any of the following topics related to the conference theme:
- Autonomy and Self-Determination
- Cosmopolitanism and Vernacularism
- Social Hierarchies and Resistance
- The Urban, the Provincial and the Local
- Cold War and Area Studies
- Movement and Migration
- Language and Linguistic Identity
- Tradition and Experimentation
- Regionalism and Transregionalism
- Majorities, Minorities and Sectarian Identities
- Borders and Citizenship
Princeton University will provide participants with shared accommodations for two nights and will contribute toward transportation expenses. Participants are encouraged to seek funding from their home institutions as well.
Proposals should include a title, a 300-word abstract, institutional affiliation, and contact information. Please submit proposals at http://tiny.cc/kpdkfz by January 5, 2020
Contact Email:
URL:
Buddhist Pedagogy Events at AAR
by Gloria Chien
Dear Colleagues
and Friends,
I would like to
draw your attention to four events related to teaching Buddhism held during
this year’s American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting in San Diego.
Buddhist
Pedagogy Seminar
1. The first session of the
Buddhist Pedagogy Seminar on Sunday, the 24th, from 3:30–5:00 pm in Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire A (Fourth Level). Please join
our business meeting afterwards.
2. The second session of the
Buddhist Pedagogy Seminar on Sunday, the 24th, from 5:30–7:00 pm in Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire M (Fourth Level). See the
seminar schedule below.
Workshops
1. “Teaching Buddhist
Contemplation in Higher Education” on Friday, the 22nd,
from 2:00–5:30 pm at the Convention Center-7A (Upper Level West). To
sign up, select Buddhist Contemplation while registering/modifying for the
Annual Meeting.
2. “Mindfulness Workshop for
Educators” on Friday, the 22nd, from
6:00–8:00 pm at Convention Center-26A (Upper Level East). To sign up,
select Mindfulness Workshop while registering/modifying for the Annual
Meeting.
I am looking
forward to seeing you,
Gloria
Gloria (I-Ling) Chien, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Religious Studies
Gonzaga University
Spokane, WA 99258
509-313-678
Student Query
by Wendi Adamek
Dear Colleagues,Thank you so much for helpful replies to my previous post on behalf of one of my undergraduate students. She really appreciated all the sources on SE Asia and tatoo designs!
I have another set of questions from another student in the same class, I'm pasting below his abstract and questions.
Thanks so much for any help!
All best,
Wendi Adamek
University of Calgary
Abstract: This paper will explore ways that the Thai political landscape has evolved in relation to its understanding of phuu mii bun (“person having merit”) as integral to Thai Buddhist kingship, under the aegis of structuration theory as coined by Anthony Giddens. With the inception of a constitutional monarchy in the mid-19th century, reformation of state ideology has created a Thai political society that is inseparable from Buddhist doctrine. However, as the international system changes economically, ideologically, and politically, the legitimacy of the upper echelon of Thai society has come into question. I argue that multiple reform movements oriented toward satisfying the needs of the Thai people have reshaped the Thai understanding of a legitimate ruler.
1) What is a good translation and/or sources relating to the Phongsawadan Nua (Northen Chronicles)?
2) Any recommendations for sources relating Thai kingship ideology and the Vessantara Jataka? I am particularly interested in the nuances of the use of “phuu mii bun.”
2) When was the first appearance of the concept of phuu mii bun in pre-modern Thailand, the Menam basin and its kingdoms? How were people determined to be phuu mii bun?
3) If anyone claimed to be phuu mii bun, how did they legitimize that claim?
4) Which of the modern reform movements in Thailand used the notion of phuu mii bun to challenge the legitimacy of the monarchy?
AAR> Buddhist Philosophy Unit panels in San Diego
by Tao Jiang
Hi everybody,Hope you all have had a good semester. At this year's AAR annual meeting in San Diego that starts next week, the Buddhist Philosophy Unit sponsors 3 panels and co-sponsors one with Tibetan and Himalaya Religions Unit.
1. "Ecology and Buddhist Philosophy"
Karin Meyers, Kathmandu University, Presiding
Sunday - 1:00 PM-3:00 PM
Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire 410A (Fourth Level)
Buddhist philosophy is organized around articulating a world in which Buddhist ideas and methods of practices become the most compelling forms of life available for those determined to transcend the conditioned world of samsara. Yet Buddhist philosophical discourse also invokes the conditioned world as a means for making the Buddhist path significant and meaningful for various communities. This panel explores Ecology and Buddhist philosophy as a broadly conceived category in which we encounter (1) traditional Pali readings on the fundamental continuity of persons and the "inanimate" world; (2) the physical world, and the non-human agents within it, as a means for advancing a polemical philosophical discourse; (3) Buddhist theories of human nature that function within a tradition to evoke attempts to preserve and steward the conditioned world of samsara; and (4) the interplay of tensions between traditional Buddhist and "radical" Western ethics, which may effect a contextual, responsive, and emergent – non-dogmatic – Buddhist environmental ethic.
Panelists:
Alexander McKinley, Loyola University
"Plant Persons and Sentient Stones: Human Relativity in Theravada Philosophies of Nature"
Dominic Sur, Utah State University
"Ecologies in an Eleventh Century Critique of Philosophical Certainty"
Stephanie Kaza, University of Vermont
"Buddhist Environmental Ethics: An Emergent and Contextual Approach"
Responding:
William Edelglass, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Marlboro College
Business Meeting:
Karin Meyers, Kathmandu University
Tao Jiang, Rutgers University
2. "Pure Lands across Asia: Transformations of the Buddhakṣetra in South and East Asian Discourses"
Tao Jiang, Rutgers University, Presiding
Sunday - 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 303 (Third Level)
This panel proposes an intra-Asian comparative conversation on the status of buddha-fields in Buddhist discourses, from early non-Buddhist and Buddhist uses of the buddhakṣetra concept in South Asia to later doctrinal and devotional approaches to Pure Lands in Chinese and Japanese traditions. Together, these papers open a conversation on buddha-fields and Pure Lands geographically, from South Asia to East Asia, and inter-traditionally, between Vedāntins and Mahāyānists, Chinese Chan and Pure Land sources, and Japanese True Pure Land and Zen discourses and practices. Although the philosophical significance of the buddhakṣetra has arguably received less attention than other aspects of Buddhist thought, when we examine its development over time in comparative perspective, we see that it is a complex concept that does significant philosophical work in diverse Buddhist (and non-Buddhist) contexts.
Panelist:
Roshni Patel, Colgate University
"The Bearing of the Field (kṣetra) in the Bhagavad-Gītā and the Vimalakīrtinirdeśasūtra"
Sarah Mattice, University of North Florida
"Pure Lands (淨土) and Nianfo (念佛) in Chinese Buddhist Discourse and Practice"
Leah Kalmanson, Drake University
"Shinran’s Concept of the Pure Land as Framed by the Problem of Practice"
3. Co-sponsoring with Tibetan and Himalaya Religions Unit
"How Empty and Empty How? Extending a Distinction to New Realms"
Greg Seton, Dartmouth College, Presiding
Monday - 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 310A (Third Level)
By the 14th century Tibetan scholars were distinguishing two ways in which emptiness could be interpreted—a person or thing could be “empty of its own intrinsic identity” or “empty of extrinsic qualities.” While the controversy the distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic emptiness provoked in Tibet has received considerable scholarly attention, there has been little critical appraisal of the distinction itself. Is there any substantial philosophical claim at stake in these rival versions of emptiness? Is this distinction only useful as an emic description of Tibetan self-understanding? Or, can it be applied outside its original Tibetan philosophical context in order to shed light on other Tibetan genres, Indian Buddhist texts, or non-dual traditions more generally? This panel endeavors to address these questions through identifying the philosophical claims at stake in the distinction, and then exploring whether it can usefully be applied to Tibetan Tantra, earlier Indian Buddhist texts, and Vedānta.
Panelists:
Jeremy Manheim, University of Wisconsin
"Just What Is the Distinction? Gorampa’s Account of Intrinsic Versus Extrinsic Emptiness"
Yaroslav Komarovski, University of Nebraska
"The Self-Emptiness/Other-Emptiness Distinction in the Tantric Context"
Sara L. McClintock, Emory University
"Other Other Emptinesses in Indian Madhyamaka"
Michael Allen, University of Virginia
"Did Śrīharṣa Have a Position? Emptiness, Existence, and Advaita Vedānta"
Responding:
John Dunne, University of Wisconsin
4. "Back to Basics: What Is Dharma?"
Pierre-Julien Harter, University of New Mexico, Presiding
Monday - 5:30 PM-7:00 PM
Convention Center-4 (Upper Level West)
What is dharma? Much of Buddhist philosophy revolves around the term and this panel aims at clarifying the meaning of the term in different contexts (Sāṃkhya, Vaiśeṣika, abhidhamma, sarvāstivāda abhidharma, Yogācāra, Huayan) and in contrast with other terms often confused with it (dravya, svabhāva, bhāva, svalakṣaṇa, etc.). The term thus reveals a rich ontological, epistemological, and soteriological significance.
Panelist:
Dhruv Nagar, University of Chicago
"Dharma in between Process, Event and Substance Metaphysics: The Place and Development of Abhidhammic Dhamma Theory in Early Indian Intellectual History"
Cameron Wright, University of South Florida
"The Soteriological Relevance of Time in the Sarvastivada Theory of Dharma"
Joy Brennan, Kenyon College
"The Whole Path in Each Dharma: The Concept of a Dharma According to Yogācāra and Huayan Thought"
Hope to see many of you in San Diego next week. Have a good weekend.
Best,
Tao & Karin
Co-chairs
AAR Buddhist Philosophy Unit
--------
Tao Jiang
Director, Rutgers Center for Chinese Studies
Associate Professor, Religion Department
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
