Qumtura Cave 75: Paintings and Inscriptions through Digital Restoration

Plimpton Room 133
The Mahindra Humanities Center
Barker Center
12 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

This lecture is generously co-sponsored by the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.

The Gatekeeper and the Ford-makers: On the Representation of the Opponent in Debate Narratives involving Sa skya Paṇḍita Kun dgaʼ rgyal mtshan (1182‒1251) and in his Philosophical Treatises

The lecture will be held at 4:15pm in the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, located in the Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS), South Building, Room 153 on the first floor.

Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Harvard University
CGIS South Building
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

This lecture is generously co-sponsored by the Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies at Harvard University.

The Incredible Vanishing Religion: Glimmers of Buddhist Imagination from Medieval China

The lecture will be held at 4:15pm in the Mahindra Humanities Center, Plimpton Room 133.

The Mahindra Humanities Center
Barker Center
12 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Prof. Campany researches Chinese religious history ca. 300 B.C.E. to 600 C.E. as well as the comparative, cross-cultural study of religion. He teaches courses on the history of Chinese religions, Daoism, and East Asian Buddhism, as well as thematic comparative courses (e.g. religion and food, holy persons in comparative perspective, the living and the dead) touching on many religious traditions, cultures, and periods.

A New Buddhist Cosmopolitanism? Buddhist Pedagogical Networks and Institutions in Contemporary Asia

The lecture will be held in the Mahindra Humanities Center, Plimpton Room 133.

The Mahindra Humanities Center
Barker Center
12 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Prof. Borchert specializes in the religions of East and Southeast Asia. His area of research includes Theravada Buddhist traditions of mainland Southeast Asia and the minorities of China. Other research interests include religion and politics, how states and other actors define religion and related categories and monastic education.

A Muddled Mess: the Mūlasarvāstivādin Monastic Code for Nuns

Please note the change in our usual time and location.

THURSDAY Feb 21st, 4:15PM 

Harvard Yenching Library
Common Room 136
2 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138

link to Google maps

FRIDAY WORKSHOP: Feb 22nd, 10AM, Religion Seminar Room 403, Barker Center.

In All the Wrong Places: Sources for a History of Indian Buddhist Attitudes toward Sexuality and the Development of the 'Best Book' of Monastic Law

Prof. Clarke's interests focus on Indian Buddhist monasticism, with particular reference to Buddhist monastic law codes, vinaya, preserved in Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, and Chinese. He is primarily concerned with trying to understand what it meant to be a Buddhist monk/nun in India.  To that end, his forthcoming monograph, Family Matters in Indian Buddhist Monasticism uses epigraphical and literary sources (Sanskrit drama, etc.) in addition to canonical Buddhist law codes to reconsider the role of the family in monastic Buddhism: relationships between monks and nuns, their families, children, marriages, and celibacy.

For more information on Prof. Shayne Clarke, please visit his faculty webpage.

Complex Agencies and the Formation of Buddhist Courts in Lhasa

Please note the change to our usual time.

THURSDAY, March 7th, 4:15pm

Plimpton Room 133
The Mahindra Humanities Center 
Barker Center
12 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

FRIDAY WORKSHOP: March 8th, 10AM, CSWR Common Room

"Reincarnation Lineages of the Fifth Dalai Lama"

Professor Lin specializes in South Asian Buddhism, with focus on the cultural history of Tibetan Buddhism during the early modern period. Her research interests include Buddhist hagiographical literature and art, the innovative interpretation of canonical tradition amidst social change, and Tibetan engagement with other courtly cultures of South and East Asia. Her current book project examines how Tibetan monastic and courtly culture intersected during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially through productions of the Wish-Fulfilling Vine (Skt. Avadanakalpalata, Tb. Dpag bsam ’khri shing), Ksemendra’s Sanskrit anthology of Buddhist narratives. Professor Lin’s other research projects address Tibetan re-imaginings of the Buddha’s life and the development of classical Tibetan poetry and poetics from Sanskrit models in institutional, material, and ritual contexts.

For more information about Prof. Lin, please see her faculty webpage.

Does Mobilizing Transnational Feminist Sentiment Marginalize Asian Buddhist Women? Reflections on 20^th Century Buddhist Nuns’ Revival Movements in South Asia

MONDAY, March 25th, 4:15pm

Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Room 153 
CGIS South Building
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Harvard Yenching Library
Common Room 136
2 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138

Buddhist Law and the Status of Legal Knowledge in Early Modern Burma

MONDAY, April 15th, 4:15PM

Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Room 153 
CGIS South Building
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

D. Christian Lammerts’ research examines the literary, social, and intellectual histories of Buddhism in Southeast Asia. He is particularly interested in the intersection of Buddhist legal culture and textual practice, and in the development and reception of regional Pali and vernacular Buddhist literature. Lammerts is currently writing a book on the history of a distinctive Buddhist legal genre and jurisprudence in Burma between 1200-1900 C.E., as well as preparing a critical edition, translation, and study of a mid-17th century treatise on Buddhist law. His work is grounded in the close reading and analysis of Southeast Asian Buddhist texts in their manuscript contexts, and he has related interests in philology, textual criticism, manuscript studies, and book history.

Ritual Practice Without the Practitioner: How Was That Possible?

MONDAY, April 22nd, 4:15pm

Plimpton Room 133
The Mahindra Humanities Center
Barker Center
12 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

A native of Jiangsu, China, Eugene Yuejin Wang studied at Fudan University in Shanghai (B.A. 1983; M.A. 1986), and subsequently at Harvard University (A.M. 1990; Ph.D. 1997). His teaching appointment at Harvard University began in 1997, and he became the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art in 2005.

His book, Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China (2005) has received the Academic Achievement Award in memory of the late Professor Nichijin Sakamoto, Rissho University, Japan. He is the art history associate editor of theEncyclopedia of Buddhism (New York, 2004).

His thirty or so articles published in The Art Bulletin, Art History, Critical Inquiry, Res: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics, Public Culture, and elsewhere, cover a wide range of subjects, including ancient bronze mirrors, Buddhist murals and sculptures, reliquaries, scroll paintings, calligraphy, woodblock prints, architecture, photography, and films. He has also translated Roland Barthes’ Fragments d’un discours amoureux into Chinese, and wrote the screenplay for a short film, Stony Touch, selected for screening in the 9th Hawaii International Film Festival.