Buddhism Unit

The Buddhism Unit welcomes proposals for Papers Sessions, Roundtables, and Individual Papers 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, especially those that address multiple regions and/or time periods. All proposals should demonstrate their coherence and significance in language accessible to the Steering Committee, which includes individuals working on diverse aspects of Buddhism. We are also committed to diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, rank, institutional affiliation, etc. WISAR (http://libblogs.luc.edu/wisar/) is an excellent resource for ensuring gender balance (if you are not listed in WISAR and would like to be, please consider uploading your information).

Although everyone is welcome to submit a proposal for Individual Papers, we are prioritizing contributions by graduate students and/or postdocs. Roughly four Individual Papers will be chosen for an omnibus session entitled “New Work in Buddhist Studies.” Please do not submit a paper as both an Individual Paper Proposal and as part of a Papers Session Proposal.

All AAR sessions are now 90 minutes or 2 hours in length. If you wish, you may indicate which time-length you have in mind for a session, but we cannot guarantee it. Our Unit will be able to sponsor three 2-hour sessions and two 90-minute sessions and we gain an additional 2-hour session with co-sponsorship.

We welcome proposals on this year’s Presidential Theme, "Future/s" or proposals that relate in some way to the location of the Annual Meeting (Denver). 

Below are some of the other themes that our members have proposed for the meeting, but please also feel free to submit a proposal on topics not represented on this list. If you are interested in contributing to a proposal on one of these topics, please contact the organizer directly.

• The Lotus Sūtra and Women (Contact: Mariko Namba Walter, mnwalter@acansrsilkroad.org or mnbwalter@gmail.com)

  The Lotus Sūtra is one of the major Mahāyāna texts explicitly mentioning women’s enlightenment and there are many aspects of the sūtra, which refer to women's Buddhist practices and attainments. This proposed panel invites paper proposals on gender-related topics based on historical and textual studies, as well as those examining the gender issues relating to the Lotus Sūtra as cross-cultural social movements.

   

• Buddhism as Cinematic Experience and Practice [co-sponsorship with Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Unit] (Contact: Dhondup T. Rekjong, rekjong@gmail.com, and Jue Liang, storylj@gmail.com)

  Instead of focusing on the content of films as relevant to Buddhism, this panel queries the embodied aspects of Buddhism as both cinematic experience and practice. Potential topics include: Film viewing as a Buddhist practice (individual viewing, collective, conversational; locations, settings, multisensational experiences); Filmmaking or film viewing as a new mode of studying Buddhism; Filmmaking as both a depiction of Buddhism on screen and a practice of Buddhism itself; Filmmaking as a cinematic way of practicing Buddhism that moves beyond its textual, oral, and institutional authorities; Presenting Buddhism within the frame of a film is like experiencing it in a particular space and time. We welcome participation from filmmakers, artists, and other practitioners in filmmaking. 

   

• Buddhism and/as Utopia: From Steven Collins to Radical Buddhist Futures (Contact: James Mark Shields, james.shields@bucknell.edu)

  This panel explores utopian thinking in Buddhist traditions, taking Steven Collins’s essay “Monasticism, Utopias, and Comparative Social Theory” in Self and Society as a starting point for examining how Buddhists have imagined ideal societies and futures. We seek papers that address utopian dimensions of Buddhist thought and practice across historical periods and regions, with particular interest in radical Buddhist reformers like Seno’o Girō who sought to transform society through Buddhist principles. How have Buddhist communities envisioned and worked toward alternative futures, and what might these visions offer for thinking about Buddhism's future/s today?  

   

• Humanistic Buddhism and the Future/s of Inter-religious Dialogue (Contact: Jizhang Yi, jizhang.yi@utoronto.ca)

  Humanistic Buddhism has become a significant force in shaping contemporary Buddhist practice, social engagement, and global ethical discourse. This panel examines how Humanistic Buddhist thought can contribute to reimagining the future/s of interreligious dialogue in a world marked by polarization, ethical uncertainty, and geopolitical conflict. We welcome participants from diverse perspectives—historical, philosophical, theological, or practical—who can speak to the ways Humanistic Buddhism might deepen, complicate, or transform models of dialogue across religious traditions.

   

• The Modern Transformation of the Buddhist Canon (Contact: Jiang Wu,  jiangwu@arizona.edu)

  Over the past two centuries, the Buddhist canon—whether in Pāli, Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian, Japanese, or modern vernaculars—has undergone profound transformations. These changes were shaped by new print technologies, state-sponsored modernization, missionary encounters, global circulations of knowledge, and the emergence of academic disciplines that reclassified Buddhist scripture according to modern epistemologies. This panel invites proposals that examine how Buddhist canons were produced, transmitted, re-edited, translated, standardized, digitized, contested, or reinterpreted in modernity. The goal is to foster conversation across Buddhist traditions and methodological boundaries, bringing together scholars of textual history, material culture, book history, and the history of religion.

   

• Growing, Giving, Refusing: Food Practices in Buddhist Communities (Contact: Paulina Kolata, pkolata@fas.harvard.edu) 

  From monastic regulations and almsgiving economies to temple cafés, mindful eating movements, and digital kitchen initiatives, food has long mediated Buddhist ethics, hierarchy, and belonging. This panel invites papers that examine how Buddhist communities across history materialize Buddhism through food practices: what is grown, donated, sold, or refused, and how these practices shape authority, intimacy, and care. This panel/roundtable welcomes contributions from diverse methodological approaches, geographies, and temporalities to explore how food shapes the embodied futures of Buddhism.

   

• What Can Narratives Do? [co-sponsorship with Arts, Literature, and Religion Unit] (Contact: Marta Sanvido, marta.sanvido@yale.edu)

  This panel invites presentations exploring how, in Buddhist contexts—especially from China to Japan—narratives serve as a space to reconsider, rethink, and sometimes subvert ritual protocols, gender norms, conceptions of the afterlife, and non-human ontology.

   

• Practices of Buddhist Prognostication (Contact: Claire Elliot, celliot@sas.upenn.edu, or Yixiu Jiang,  jiangy11@stanford.edu)

  Prophecies, signs, portents, and other nimittas seem to infuse Buddhist texts and practice with a preoccupation with knowing the future. This panel invites papers from a diverse range of historical, ethnographic, textual, and/or regional perspectives to interrogate these future-telling practices and the beliefs that ground them. We seek to explore how futures are accessed, interpreted, and circulated, and what motivates the enduring Buddhist interest in foresight and prognostication. 

   

• The Creative Frontiers (Contact: Lu Huang, luhuang@berkeley.edu) 

  Recent scholarship across Buddhist and Hindu history has demonstrated that so-called peripheral or marginal regions are often sites of cultural creativity. New research shows that frontiers have long generated innovative religious forms that later reshaped the wider world. This panel views frontiers not as passive receivers of tradition but as dynamic laboratories where new doctrines, iconographies, rituals, and narratives emerge. We invite papers that explore how frontier spaces become engines of religious futurity: places where new social possibilities, doctrinal developments, and mythic visions take shape. Submissions from all Buddhist traditions and methodological approaches, including textual, historical, anthropological, and ethnographic studies, are welcome.

   

• Buddhist Postcolonial Futurities: Reaction, Reform, Revolution (Contact: Tony Scott, scott@ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp)

  Decades of inter-imperial warfare almost wrecked the planet by the mid-twentieth century, but also opened radical opportunities for anti-imperial worldmaking. This panel aims to explore the role of Buddhist-inflected postcolonial futurities in such worldmaking, manifest as struggles for a new international order or complicity in silencing these same efforts.