Sinology and Buddhist Studies in the West introduces students to key debates, methods, and emerging perspectives in the Western study of Chinese religions, with a particular emphasis on material culture, ritual practice, and more-than-human approaches. Through a series of lectures by leading scholars—including Stuart Young, Susan Huang, Jason Protass, and Ann Heirman—students will examine how Chinese Buddhist tradition has been interpreted, theorized, and reframed in contemporary scholarship.
The course foregrounds themes that challenge anthropocentric and text-centered paradigms: multispecies relations, the agency of animals and insects, ritual objects and images, book circulation networks, and the lived religious worlds constructed by materiality and visual culture.
By situating these topics within broader trajectories of Western Sinology and Buddhist Studies, the course equips students to understand how the field has evolved, what assumptions have shaped its development, and how new interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approaches are transforming the study of East Asian religions today.
Course Schedule
Stuart H. Young/Associate Professor of East Asian Religions,Department of Religious Studies,Bucknell University
03/09(一) More-than-human Chinese religions
03/10(二) Silkworm-human relations in Chinese Buddhism
03/11(三) Chinese sericulture religion and the small agencies of silkworms
Shih-shan Susan Huang/Associate Professor of East Asian Religions,Department of Religious Studies,Bucknell University
03/16(一) Materiality and Ritual in Chinese Religions
03/17(二) Buddhist Book Roads
03/18(三) The Most Popular Buddhist Book Circa 1450
03/19(四) Ten Kings of Hell Paintings
Jason Protass/Associate Professor,Department of Religious Studies,Brown University
03/30(一) Buddhists and their Environments
Ann Heirman/Professor of Chinese Language and Culture, Ghent University
04/01(三) Animals in daily monastic life: between India and China
