Submitted to Program Units |
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1: Buddhism in the West Unit |
Buddhist Studies has increasingly attended to what Helen Jin Kim characterizes as the “transpacific turn,” namely the transoceanic cultural flows through which Buddhist identities and communities are constructed. In situating their subjects within multiple transoceanic imperial contexts, these papers orient contemporary Buddhists within modernist frameworks that disrupt a simple West/East binary. Paper 1 re-examines the fault lines of the disciplinary boundaries of Buddhism in the West to draw out various subaltern Buddhist modernities. Paper 2 utilizes an ecological and colonial studies framework to consider the ecological consequences and neocolonial limitations of Tibetan nāga practice in North America. Paper 3 situates Shaku Sōen’s discussions on Buddhist notions of social equality within anti-colonial solidarity and imperialist projects
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
Buddhist Studies has increasingly attended to what Helen Jin Kim characterizes as the “transpacific turn,” namely the transoceanic cultural flows through which Buddhist identities and communities are constructed. In situating their subjects within multiple transoceanic imperial contexts, these papers orient contemporary Buddhists within modernist frameworks that disrupt a simple West/East binary. Paper 1 re-examines the fault lines of the disciplinary boundaries of Buddhism in the West to draw out various subaltern Buddhist modernities. Paper 2 utilizes an ecological and colonial studies framework to consider the ecological consequences and neocolonial limitations of Tibetan nāga practice in North America. Paper 3 situates Shaku Sōen’s discussions on Buddhist notions of social equality within anti-colonial solidarity and imperialist projects