In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

Calls to decolonize Buddhist Studies are growing, but what decolonization means remains contested. This paper argues that dismantling Orientalist legacies is not enough. The field’s epistemic foundations must be rethought. Starting from the history of Buddhists Studies in Japan, this paper will show how the field was co-produced through transnational entanglements, shaped as much by Japanese intellectuals as by European Orientalists. Indeed, Japanese scholars reframed Buddhism to resist Western hegemonic classifications, yet in doing so, they also helped construct the categories that continue to define the field—often in ways aligned with Japan’s imperial ambitions. This history complicates default postcolonial critiques. Drawing on Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s cosmopolitan ecology of knowledges and a metamodern approach, this paper proposes an alternative: a Buddhist Studies that integrates Buddhist epistemologies as generative theoretical resources rather than mere objects of study, opening new methodological possibilities for the discipline and religious studies at large.

Drawing on recent work on religion and empire, this paper looks to Burma’s Konbaung Dynasty (1752–1885) to investigate the entanglement between Buddhism and empire. Scholars working outside of Asia have been publishing new findings on how religion has structured and resisted imperialism (Wenger and Johnson 2022); however, scholarship on Asian history, especially in Southeast Asia, has been less attentive to entanglements between Buddhism and empire. This paper investigates how the Burmese negotiators of the 1867 Treaty for the Further Protection of Trade with the British used Buddhist history, literature, and practices to assert the Burmese sovereign’s right to corner particular markets as Burmese royal monopolies. This paper seeks to complicate the histories we tell about empire and Southeast Asia to show how Buddhist traditions have participated in empire at multiple registers—from resistance to domination.

Inspired by Curators of the Buddha, this paper examines the American Vipassana movement through the lens of Orientalism. Departing from the typical Buddhist modernism framework, I explore how the movement established authority by employing both exoticizing and denigrating forms of Orientalism. Exoticizing Orientalism, such as portraying Asia as a source of ancient wisdom and utilizing the “Oriental monk” trope, was employed to legitimate the founders’ authority. Conversely, denigrating Orientalism discredited Asian and Asian American Theravada by depicting it as corrupt and backward, thereby justifying the movement's innovations. This dual approach shaped sectarian boundaries by fostering alliances with other convert meditation-centric lineages while Othering and excluding Asian and Asian American Theravada, thereby solidifying the movement's distinct identity and authority.

Ambivalence–simultaneous love and hate of an object of desire–is a recurrent concept in Curators of the Buddha (1995): it is mentioned explicitly in Donald Lopez Jr.’s introduction as well as the essays written by Luis Gómez and Lopez. While it has been given explicit theoretical treatment in postcolonial studies by authors like Homi Bhabha, such analysis has not yet been adequately applied to Buddhist Studies. This paper revisits ambivalence in order to better understand the “logics of representation” (11) and how this applies to the current state of Buddhist Studies. It argues that the psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein is best suited for analyzing ambivalence for its object relations theory as an analysis of desire. In doing so, this paper aims to not only contribute to ‘postcolonial’ Buddhist Studies but to postcolonial critique more generally through the use of the psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein.

Calls to decolonize Buddhist Studies are growing, but what decolonization means remains contested. This paper argues that dismantling Orientalist legacies is not enough. The field’s epistemic foundations must be rethought. Starting from the history of Buddhists Studies in Japan, this paper will show how the field was co-produced through transnational entanglements, shaped as much by Japanese intellectuals as by European Orientalists. Indeed, Japanese scholars reframed Buddhism to resist Western hegemonic classifications, yet in doing so, they also helped construct the categories that continue to define the field—often in ways aligned with Japan’s imperial ambitions. This history complicates default postcolonial critiques. Drawing on Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s cosmopolitan ecology of knowledges and a metamodern approach, this paper proposes an alternative: a Buddhist Studies that integrates Buddhist epistemologies as generative theoretical resources rather than mere objects of study, opening new methodological possibilities for the discipline and religious studies at large.

Drawing on recent work on religion and empire, this paper looks to Burma’s Konbaung Dynasty (1752–1885) to investigate the entanglement between Buddhism and empire. Scholars working outside of Asia have been publishing new findings on how religion has structured and resisted imperialism (Wenger and Johnson 2022); however, scholarship on Asian history, especially in Southeast Asia, has been less attentive to entanglements between Buddhism and empire. This paper investigates how the Burmese negotiators of the 1867 Treaty for the Further Protection of Trade with the British used Buddhist history, literature, and practices to assert the Burmese sovereign’s right to corner particular markets as Burmese royal monopolies. This paper seeks to complicate the histories we tell about empire and Southeast Asia to show how Buddhist traditions have participated in empire at multiple registers—from resistance to domination.

Inspired by Curators of the Buddha, this paper examines the American Vipassana movement through the lens of Orientalism. Departing from the typical Buddhist modernism framework, I explore how the movement established authority by employing both exoticizing and denigrating forms of Orientalism. Exoticizing Orientalism, such as portraying Asia as a source of ancient wisdom and utilizing the “Oriental monk” trope, was employed to legitimate the founders’ authority. Conversely, denigrating Orientalism discredited Asian and Asian American Theravada by depicting it as corrupt and backward, thereby justifying the movement's innovations. This dual approach shaped sectarian boundaries by fostering alliances with other convert meditation-centric lineages while Othering and excluding Asian and Asian American Theravada, thereby solidifying the movement's distinct identity and authority.

Ambivalence–simultaneous love and hate of an object of desire–is a recurrent concept in Curators of the Buddha (1995): it is mentioned explicitly in Donald Lopez Jr.’s introduction as well as the essays written by Luis Gómez and Lopez. While it has been given explicit theoretical treatment in postcolonial studies by authors like Homi Bhabha, such analysis has not yet been adequately applied to Buddhist Studies. This paper revisits ambivalence in order to better understand the “logics of representation” (11) and how this applies to the current state of Buddhist Studies. It argues that the psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein is best suited for analyzing ambivalence for its object relations theory as an analysis of desire. In doing so, this paper aims to not only contribute to ‘postcolonial’ Buddhist Studies but to postcolonial critique more generally through the use of the psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein.

In contemporary Thailand, wish making rituals are becoming more popular, and attract many visitors to temples. These rituals stand out because there is no monastic intervention needed. A case study in Chiang Mai city highlights the significance of such lay-led aspirational rituals. The Ganesh ritual at Wat Pa Daed is complex and intricate, requiring participants to follow multiple steps across the temple. For Thai Buddhists, the ritual offers a means to fulfill personal desires through the intervention of an unseen being in the Buddhist cosmos. By translating and analyzing the ritual’s detailed steps, interviewing the senior monk who designed it, and applying ritual theory and perspectives on popular religion, this presentation demonstrates how such practices hold value within the Buddhist landscape and adapt to modern, personalized religious environments.

On 28 May 2022, a reported 10,000 people gathered at the Miners Welfare Park in the small English town of Bedworth for the ceremonial burning of a vast wooden COVID-19 memorial named ‘Sanctuary’. The project borrowed directly from practices at the vast Burning Man Festival in Nevada, but were transplanted into a very different cultural and social location. This paper explores how this ritual came to take place, noting the extent to which its creators stressed that its meaning should be weighed up by those in the crowd rather than imposed by the event’s organisers. It will be suggested that factors shaping this event are the decline of church influence in Britain, the transnational nature of memory cultures, and the extent to which the pandemic has produced no single mode of publicly ritualising bereavement. 

In contemporary luxury markets, overstock destruction emerges as a form of ritual suppression that conceals surplus while performing a bespoke act of power and distinction. Building on Mauss’s insights into gift exchange and Bataille’s theory of expenditure, my paper reinterprets unsold luxury goods' obliteration as a sacrificial act that expunges excess and reaffirms exclusivity. By engaging with the sociology of ritual, I demonstrate that this deliberate practice creates a unique symbolic order, simultaneously suppressing visible overabundance and challenging market norms. Through a comparative analysis grounded in ritual theory, I argue that the notion of expenditure is not merely economic but also ritualistic, serving as a critical commentary on contemporary luxury consumption. This study offers a nuanced perspective on how bespoke ritual practices in luxury not only resist commodification but also reconfigure distinction and symbolic power in modern economic life.

The Binding of Isaac has held a central place in Judaism since Antiquity, but interestingly, Sarah is absent from the biblical narrative. Midrashic interpretations have filled this lacuna, and the story continued to acquire new layers of meaning in medieval Europe, especially following the First Crusade. Jews who chose death over forced conversion were often depicted as Isaac, and stories of parents killing their children to prevent their Christianization related to Abraham. Sarah, on the one hand, suffers and dies in response to Abraham’s actions, revealing similarities to midrashim as well as Mary’s response to the Crucifixion. On the other hand, despite her pain, she accepts God’s request to sacrifice her beloved son.

This paper will explore this innovative interpretation within medieval and early modern Ashkenazi texts, in both Hebrew and (understudied) Yiddish sources. In particular, the Ashkenazi portrayal of Sarah will be compared with that of the Virgin Mary.

This paper examines Sarah’s maternal role in Bene Israel songs of the Binding of Isaac, where she emerges as a repository of emotion, a divine protector, and an absent yet enduring presence. Drawing on Marathi Jewish texts from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—composed in verse and influenced by Hindu, Christian, Muslim, and secular musical traditions—the author explores how Sarah’s absence from the biblical Akedah is reinterpreted through song and performance. These adaptations, shaped by South Asia’s multireligious milieu, draw on lyrical tropes of longing central to regional devotional and secular traditions. Through close literary analysis, musicological study, and ethnographic research with Bene Israel women in Bombay, this paper argues that song and performance were not ancillary to Bene Israel religious life but central to shaping scriptural interpretation, gender roles, and community identity in the context of Indian nationalism and Jewish diaspora consciousness.

This paper examines the mythical figure of Sarah as a maternal symbol in mystical ritual and the earthly experience of the Sabbatian Ma’aminim—followers of Sabbatai Tsvi (1626–1676), one of the most prominent Jewish messiahs, who converted to Islam in his footsteps and established secret communities in the Ottoman Empire.

Among nineteenth-century Sabbatian remnants, Sarah is depicted as a maternal cosmic force of redemption, intertwined with female community members and mothers. This paper explores the relationship between the mystical-theological elevation of her motherhood and actual gender structures through an analysis of clandestine, multilingual Sabbatian ritual songs, depictions of daily life, and Muslim-Jewish interfaith interactions. It examines divine and human Sabbatian mothers and how emotional expressions of motherhood were shaped through the community’s performative devotional practice. Ultimately, this case study raises broader questions about how mystical traditions reconfigure gendered symbolism and how theological innovation interacts with communal realities.

The Ghost Dance Movement is historically and culturally complex and open to misrepresentation and misinterpretation. This partly stems from the Ghost Dance’s discursive association with the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 as a result of the governmental response to the movement. Misunderstood and mis-framed by the government at the time, the Ghost Dance movement did not end with that massacre, but expanded in subsequent years and has appeared again in the twentieth century (Warren 2017; Wenger 2009; Kehoe 2006). Instead of being understood as an effort on the part of the Ghost Dancers to address their conditions using the ritual actions of their past, the entire popular record of the Ghost Dance emphasizes this violent “end,” while obfuscating the ongoing presence of indigenous people, dance, and cosmovision in the United States continuing to today. 

This paper examines the production of the distinction between religion and medicine as it pertains to peyote consumption in colonial New Spain and the United States. I posit that whether peyote consumption was considered to be a religious or a secular activity was deeply influenced by the gender of the practitioner. This paper is an exploration toward a theory of Indigenous medicine and healing, centering Indigenous women working with peyote in two radically different time periods. 

This paper examines the question of ‘Being’ as it pertains to the cultural life of the Delaware Tribe of Indians. A cultural life that many in the tribe perceive to be at the precipice of dissolution as a unique, coherent entity. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, it seeks to understand the "authentic" and "inauthentic" responses to this existential situation and the manner in which Delaware people variously either express or perform their ontological make-up as something specifically Delaware and (attempt to) uphold attendant commitments or, conversely, are thought to be falling back upon and conforming to popular public settler-colonial representations of “being Indian” or subscribing to a homogenizing pan-Indianism.  

This study utilizes accounts of indigenous sweetgrass practices and myths in anthropological and religious studies fields to evaluate how indigenous approaches serve to expand Western ethical imagination around plants and ecological preservation. Indigenous harvesting practices and uses of sweetgrass are embedded in sacred myths and assumptions about the interconnectivity between humanity and plants. In this interconnection, plants and humans are envisioned to be in a sacred relationship of symbiotic mutuality. This study examines how harvesting practices contrast with dominant Western secular and religious paradigms of ecological ethics in approaches to plant replenishing. Initial studies regarding sweetgrass indicate that traditional indigenous approaches of human-plant relationality through sacred harvesting have proved more effective than predominant ecological approaches of not harvesting in promoting plant replenishment. Indigenous stories and practices challenge common Western paradigms of ecological preservation and potentially promote the rights of plant-life. 

Despite wide-ranging scholarship over the last three decades, the development of tantric Buddhism out of fully-developed Mahāyāna contexts in ancient India remains unclear. The very use of the terms “tantric” vs. “esoteric” Buddhism, particularly in reference to this nascent period, also continues to create controversy. It is therefore critical to ask: what characterizes an object as “tantric" in Mahāyāna visual culture? And further, what role should texts play in interpreting “tantric” subjects in visual material? This paper presents a multi-site visual milieu—sculptural programs within the western Deccan rock-cut cave monasteries of Nāsik and Kānherī—as evidence of the emergence of early esotericism in the late fifth to sixth centuries CE. A comparison of tantric ritual manuals of the kriyā and caryā classes to earlier in situ imagery reveals a three-dimensional mandala depicting early mantra families (kulas) together with the reverence of female deities who embodied mantras in on-the-ground practice.

This proposal seeks to explore the key Tantric objects used in the Kālikākrama, a powerful and esoteric Tantric tradition within Śākta practices centered on the worship of the goddess Kali. Known for embodying destruction, transformation, and liberation, Kali is the focal point of transformative rituals that connect practitioners to her energy. The study will focus on the symbolic meanings, functional roles, and deeper spiritual connections of these sacred objects used in Kālikākrama rituals. By analyzing these tools, the research aims to highlight how they facilitate communion with the divine feminine and guide practitioners towards spiritual liberation.

What is the point of ringing a bell at the entrance to a temple? Jains have a unique answer to this question: ringing a bell protects the temple through the sounding of mantras. In many Jain temples, yantras, or tantric diagrams, are inscribed on these bells to send apotropaic messages into the world with each ring. This paper examines this unstudied ritual use of yantras by looking at the history of the Jain deity Ghaṇṭākarṇa Mahāvīra, whose nineteenth-century Śvetāmbara shrine in Mahudi, Gujarat, is one of the most popular temples in India, especially around Diwali. Examining rituals to Ghaṇṭākarṇa in early modern Sanskrit texts and yantras on the bells at the entrances to a few Digambara temples in north India reveals the forgotten history of Ghaṇṭākarṇa. Ghaṇṭākarṇa rose to prominence in Jainism not as a Śvetāmbara boon-giving deity, but as the focus of yantras inscribed on Digambara temple bells.

Objects of worship in Tantric ritual vary, such as iconic or aniconic murtis, or yantras, but they can also be living human bodies. Such bodies most often belong to cisgender woman and girls. While the Tantric body is typically theorized as a philosophical construction beyond gender, this paper argues for an expansion of the concept of Tantric bodies to include the feminine ritual participant who is the object or tool of ritual worship. This paper explores these Tantric objects as Tantric subjects—Tantric bodies that are explicitly gendered, and possess material agency, the power of material objects to enact effects on the world around them. Drawing on numerous Kaula texts from a wide range of periods, traditions, and locations, this paper argues for a new lens for understanding gender, power, and agency in Tantric ritual that also informs our understanding of feminine power dynamics in the broader scope of Hinduism.

Tantric rituals are foundational for understanding Tantric philosophy. Anything we can establish from complex philosophical texts we can also derive from manuals outlining Tantric rituals. Rather than only reading philosophical texts, I begin with ritual practices in Tantras, where the notion of ritual objects crosses the boundary between the sacred and profane, and at the same time, also confronts the polar divide between subject and object, engaging in philosophical reflections on the basis of ritual practices that buttress the same claims. I first focus on ritual objects that are common to any Hindu ritual, revealing the additional Tantric meaning. Then, I highlight objects that are taboo in the common Hindu ritual world. I address the ritual objects that are also subjects, sentient beings, and return the gaze to pure objects that are given subjectivity. Finally, I address objectified subjectivity and the elimination of bipolarity in the conversation on Tantric rituals.

This adapted fishbowl discussion method is presented to foster student engagement, reduce anxiety, and ensure a focused, inclusive dialogue. The combination of preparatory assignments and a structured format that integrates principles from Reflective Structured Dialogue, this method emphasizes the inclusion of all voices—author and students—within a structure aimed at helping students feel more confident and prepared to participate. Students submit detailed outlines, opening statements, and discussion questions in advance, and the discussion follows a three-round format: an opening statement, personal reflections, and question introductions. A timed, focused discussion ensues, followed by a final reflection. This approach aims to create a supportive environment for deeper engagement with the material, ensuring all voices are heard, and discussions stay grounded in the content.

In the contemporary study of religion Max Weber’s well-known proclamations concerning technology, rationalization, and the disenchantment of the world are frequently cited. Often overlooked, however, is the context in which he spoke, not as a prophet, demagogue, or leader of the modern era, but as a teacher and fellow student. Ultimately, education, as Weber understands it, is an existential task that seeks to prepare the student, and the educator, to engage the challenges of the day full in the face. The inconvenient fact of the matter, for us in our day, a day further dominated by techno-rationalization within and without the classroom, is that these challenges have become all the more demanding. Employing a Weberian analysis to the educational challenges of our day, the present work seeks to question how and in which ways video game technologies might help us reenchant student learning experiences and outcomes in a university setting.

Video games provide virtual playgrounds for exploring religious identity and ethical decision making. Games like Papers, Please should replace the trolley problem and other contrived thought experiments when teaching ethics, while other games such as Indika allow players to control a character going through a crisis of faith. Gameplay demonstrations of these two games will be provided. Student reactions to these games will be described, as well as the relevant scholarship that can transform games like these from pastime activities into serious objects of scholarly study. 

This paper explores various ways instructors might approach their teaching and their students’ learning about lived Buddhism, so that they can determine which might work for their own students at their specific institutions. Framing my discussion around the seven characteristics of religious practice identified by Nancy Ammerman—embodiment, materiality, emotional, aesthetics, moral judgment, narrative structuring, and spirituality (2020, p. 9)—I show how each dimension lends itself to a particular pedagogical approach. Embodied and sensory-based learning facilitates the study of embodiment, place-based learning directs students’ attention towards materiality; affective learning strengthens their awareness of emotions; arts-based learning encourages their critical reflection about aesthetics; applied learning assists in their moral judgment; storytelling enables them to appreciate narrative structuring, and contemplative and integrative learning supports their study of spirituality.

At first glance, Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) was no friend of the History of Religions School. He criticized it publicly and, unlike his successor to the university chair and in the “Church Father’s Commission” of the Prussian Academy, Hans Lietzmann (1875-1942), was hardly interested in religions in the environment of ancient Christianity. But what was his exact relationship with prominent representatives of this group? How did he treat their publications in the Theologische Literaturzeitung he founded and edited at a specific time? What place did he give them and their long-term editorial projects in the academy? How did this relationship change under his successor, Lietzmann, at the university, academy, and in the review journal? The paper will draw a new picture from previously unpublished sources.

This paper explores anew the theological questions and perspectives on religious experience that informed and emerged out of the work of the History of Religions School. While the School’s legacy for historical study of religions in a comparative mode is generally acknowledged (especially in the field of biblical studies), the theological orientation of the School is often regarded with more ambivalence. For scholars such as Ernst Troeltsch, however, the methods of an historical approach to the study of Christianity opened new pathways for thinking about the nature of faith that might resonate with “ordinary devout people,” as he wrote in his book on The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religion. Troeltsch and other figures such as Rudolf Otto sketched models of religious experience that bear re-examination in relation to methodological trends in the field today. 

The pioneering work of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule in the study of ancient Judaism and formative Christianity garnered considerable attention from contemporary French scholars of religion. The efforts of figures such as Gunkel, Bousset, and others to extricate Judaism and Christianity from the historical-religious vacuum in which they had long been studied, paralleled the comparative approaches of liberal Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish scholars in France. However, the institutional and ideological contexts for conducting comparative religion in France and Germany were markedly different, with the French Histoire des religions closely intertwined with the laicization agenda of the Third Republic. This paper explores the scientific and theological responses of three key figures—liberal Protestant Jean Réville, Catholic Modernist Alfred Loisy, and liberal Jewish scholar Salomon Reinach—who engaged with the methods and theological underpinnings of the Schule. It also situates their work within the broader historical contexts of the Dreyfus Affair, the Modernist crisis within the Catholic Church, and the solidification of the principle of laïcité through the 1905 Separation of Churches and State.

At the turn of the twentieth century Adolf von Harnack was among the most influential theological figures in the United States. But by mid-century, his influence had seemingly declined due his role in World War I and the rise of alternative historiographical methodologies such as the History of Religions School. Did Harnack’s influence actually disappear, or did it adapt to the intellectual and social context of the United States? This paper examines how two of Harnack’s students – William Adams Brown and Arthur Cushman McGiffert, both leading figures at Union Theological Seminary – were responding to and accommodating the challenges brought by the History-of-Religions School, focusing on how they re-imagined the relationship between descriptive and normative approaches. In what ways were they reconceiving the relationship between ‘historical’ and ‘systematic’ theology? To what extent did Harnack’s influence persist? And how might this alternative account transform our understanding of the development of theology in twentieth-century America?