University of Heidelberg

International Symposium "Imagining the Feminine in East Asian Religions and Medicine", Nov 5–7, 2010 - Speakers

Anna Andreeva (Heidelberg)

Anna Andreeva received her BA from the Irkutsk Linguistic University in Siberia in 1997, where she was trained as translator in Japanese and English. She lived in Japan in 1998-2001, where she accomplished her MA in Japanese classical literature at Kanazawa University. Anna received her MPhil (2002) and PhD (2006) at Cambridge University, where she worked on the issues of esoteric Buddhism and Shinto in medieval Japan, before being awarded a postdoc at Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard for 2006-2007. During 2007-2010, she held the Margaret Smith Research Fellowship at Girton College. Currently, Anna is a research fellow and Assistant Professor in Japanese History at the Cluster of Excellence "Europe and Asia", Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies, University of Heidelberg. She is coordinating the project "Religion and Medicine in Premodern East Asia" and teaching courses on Japanese Religions.

 

Brigitte Baptandier (CNRS)

Brigitte Baptandier is Director of Research at the CNRS in Paris for the Comparative Ethnology and Sociology research unit. She also teaches at INALCO, the University of Nanterre Paris Ouest, and the University of Geneva. Most recently, she has authored The Lady of Linshui. A Chinese Female Cult (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2008), and edited Du corps au texte. Approches comparatives, (Nanterre, Société d’ethnologie, 2008). Her research interests include the representations of femininity and the anthropology of writing, as well as the local cults, rituals, and mythology of Southeastern China (Fujian).

James Benn (McMaster)

James A. Benn (PhD, UCLA 2001) is Associate Professor of Buddhism and East Asian Religions at McMaster University.  He studies Buddhism and Taoism in medieval China.  To date, he has focused on three major areas of research: bodily practice in Chinese Religions; the ways in which people create and transmit new religious practices and doctrines; and the religious dimensions of commodity culture.  He has published on self-immolation, spontaneous human combustion, Buddhist apocryphal scriptures, and tea and alcohol in medieval China.  He is the author of Burning for the Buddha: Self-immolation in Chinese Buddhism (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007) and is currently completing a second book, Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History.

George Clonos (Stanford)

George Clonos (Georgios Klonos) received his undergraduate degree in Japanese Studies from Stanford University and a Master’s degree in Oriental Religions from the School of Oriental and African Studies in the United Kingdom. His Ph.D. dissertation (Stanford) was on Mount Omine and the Shugendo tradition of mountain asceticism in the Tokugawa period. A chapter related to this topic will appear in the book Japanese Religious Landscape (edited by Matsuoka Hideaki; Berghahn Press, forthcoming). He spent the 2008-09 academic year at Yale University’s Council on East Asian Studies as a postoctoral associate. Apart from Shugendo, his research interests include sacred landscapes, ascetic practice, Esoteric Buddhism, and Edo-period religion. While at Yale, he revised his dissertation for publication and worked on journal articles related to Edo-period religion.

Michael Como (Columbia)

Michael Como, Associate Professor (B.A., Harvard, 1985; Ph.D., Stanford, 2000), is Toshu Fukami Professor of Shinto Studies. His recent research has focused on the religious history of the Japanese islands from the Asuka through the early Heian periods. He is the author of several articles on the ritual and political consequences of the introduction of literacy, sericulture and horse-culture from the Asian sub-continent into ancient Japan. His major publications include Shotoku: Ethnicity, Ritual and Violence in the Formation of Japanese Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2008), Weaving and Binding: Immigrant Gods and Female Immortals in Ancient Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2009) and Medieval Shinto, a special edition of the Cahiers d’Êxtreme Asie that he co-edited with Bernard Faure and Iyanaga Nobumi. He is currently working on a new monograph tentatively entitled “Resonant Bodies: Disease and Astrology in the Heian Cultic Revolution."

Catherine Despeux (INALCO, CRCAO)

Catherine Despeux is professor of Chinese at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) in Paris. She specializes in the study of Chinese religion and health practices. She also oversees the « Médecine, religion et société dans la Chine médiévale. Les manuscrits de dunhuang et de Turfan et les pratiques de santé“ project at the CNRS, which considers the history of Chinese, Central Asian, Indian, and Arab medicines through a comparative textual analysis of Chinese sources and Central Asian manuscripts. She is also interested in conceptions of the body in Six Dynasty Buddhist and Daoist self-cultivation practices.
 

Lucia Dolce (SOAS)

Lucia Dolce is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of the Study of Religions at SOAS, University of London, where she also directs the Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions. She holds a first degree in Japanese Studies from the University of Venezia, Italy, and a PhD from Leiden University, The Netherlands. Her main research interest is Japanese religiosity of the medieval period, in particular, the esotericisation of religious practice, visual culture, and ritual. Her study of esoteric patterns in the thought of Nichiren was awarded the Nakamura Hajme Prize in 2004. She is currently completing a research project on rituals in pre-modern Japanese religion.

Grégoire Espesset (CRCAO)

Former Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Academia Sinica, Institute of History and Philology, Taiwan (2003-2005), and Visiting Scholar at the Kyoto University, Institute for Research in Humanities (2006-2008), Grégoire Espesset has just completed a two-year research and teaching assignment at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), Section des sciences religieuses, Paris, as Lecturer for the seminar “Histoire du taoïsme et des religions chinoises” (2008-2010). He is now an unpaid research associate at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Centre de recherche sur les civilisations de l’Asie orientale (CRCAO/UMR 8155), Paris. His research focuses on alternative ideologies in early imperial Chinese society, especially those documented by the Great Peace (Taiping) textual corpus, early Taoist scriptures, and fragments of Weft Writs (weishu).

Charlotte Furth (USC)

Charlotte Furth is Professor Emerita of Chinese History at the University of Southern California.  Her recent publications include A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History 960-1665 (U C Press 1999), and the edited volume, Health and Hygiene in Chinese East Asia:Policies and Publics in the Long Twentieth Century  (with Angela Leung, Duke University Press, 2010).  She is also editor and contributor  to Thinking with Cases: Specialist Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History ( with Judith Zeitlin and Hsiung Pingchen, Hawaii 2007).  She lives in Los Angeles. Her website is http://sites.google.com/site/charlottedfurth

Matsumoto Ikuyo (Yokohama City University)

Matsumoto Ikuyo has received her doctorate degree from Ritsumeikan (Kyoto) in 2002, and subsequently was appointed to the postdoctoral fellowship of Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS), which she held during 2004-2007. Her research interests include the relationship between Esoteric Buddhism and rituals of imperial enthronement and analysis of relevant historical sources. At present, Dr Matsumoto Ikuyo is an Associate Professor at Yokohama City University (Kanagawa) and a Visiting Associate at the Ritsumeikan University's Art Research Centre in Kyoto.

Christine Mollier (CNRS, CRCAO)

Christine Mollier is a researcher specializing in the history of medieval Taoism at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). She holds a PhD in Asian Studies from the University of Paris 7, and was a member of the French research group on Dunhuang manuscripts. She is the author of Une apocalypse du Ve siècle: Le Livre des incantations divines des grottes abyssales (Paris 1990). She now belongs to the Center of Research on the Civilizations of East Asia (CRCAO, Paris). Her work focuses on medieval Taoist eschatology, Buddho-Taoist literature and iconography. Her most recent major publication is Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face: Scripture, Ritual, and Iconographic Exchange in Medieval China (Univ. of Hawaii, 2008).

Fabrizio Pregadio (Stanford Center for East Asian Studies)

Fabrizio Pregadio specializes in the history of Daoism and its alchemical traditions. He has taught at the Technical University in Berlin, Stanford University, and McGill University. He is the editor of The Encyclopedia of Taoism (Routledge, 2008), and the author of Great Clarity: Daoism and Alchemy in Early Medieval China (Stanford UP, 2006) and Awakening to Reality: The “Regulated Verses“ of the Wuzhen pian, a Taoist Classic of Internal Alchemy (Golden Elixir Press, 2009). He is currently completing a book containing a study and an annotated translation of the Zhouyi cantong qi. 

James Robson (Harvard)

James Robson specializes in the history of Medieval Chinese Buddhism and Daoism and is particularly interested in issues of sacred geography, local religious history, talismans, religious art, and the historical development of Chan/Zen Buddhism. He is the author of Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak (Nanyue ??) in Medieval China (Harvard University Asia Center, East Asia Monograph Series [Harvard University Press] 2009), which received the Stanislas Julien Prize for 2010 by the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres [Prix Stanislas Julien by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Institut de France)]. He is also the co-editor of Buddhist Monasticism in East Asia: Places of Practice (London: Routledge, 2010). His publications include: "Signs of Power: Talismanic Writing in Chinese Buddhism" (in History of Religions 2008), "Buddhism and the Chinese Marchmount System [Wuyue]: A Case Study of the Southern Marchmount (Mt. Nanyue)," "A Tang Dynasty Chan Mummy [roushen] and a Modern Case of Furta Sacra? Investigating the Contested Bones of Shitou Xiqian," "Faith in Museums: On the Confluence of Museums and Religious Sites in Asia" (PMLA, 2010), and "Buddhist Sacred Geography in China". He is presently engaged in a long-term collaborative research project with the École Française d’Extrême-Orient studying a large collection of local religious statuary from Hunan province.

Gaynor Sekimori (SOAS)

Gaynor Sekimori is currently a Research Associate in the Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and concurrently Visiting Professor at Kokugakuin University, Tokyo. She was Managing Editor of the International Journal of Asian Studies and member of the Institute of Oriental Culture at the University of Tokyo 2001–2007. Her research interests centre on topics within Japanese religious history, notably Shugendo (history, ritual practice, and contemporary resurgence), the post-1868 policy separating Buddha and kami worship (shinbutsu bunri) in Japan, and the prohibition of female entry to sacred sites (nyonin kinsei). She is the author of numerous academic articles, and translated and edited Mandala of the Mountain in 2005. She recently gave a talk on "Miko and Haguro Shugendo" at the 2010 AAS meeting in Philadelphia. 

Dominic Steavu (Heidelberg)

Dominic Steavu is Assistant Professor of East Asian Intellectual History. He obtained a doctoral degree from Stanford University, where he completed a dissertation on "The Three Sovereigns Tradition: Talismans, Elixirs, and Meditation in Early Medieval China." He holds MAs from Stanford and Harvard, and a BA from McGill University. Before taking up his post at Heidelberg, Dominic Steavu spent a year at McGill's Centre for East Asian Research, and three years in Tokyo as a Research Fellow at Toyo University's Centre for Chinese History and Philosophy, and at the International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies. His research interests include early medieval Daoism, the Buddho-Daoist interchange of divinatory techniques and medico-apotropaic knowledge, and the presence of Daoist elements pertaining to healing, prognostication, meditation, or alchemy in medieval Japanese religion.

Katja Triplett (Marburg)

Katja Triplett is Associate Professor (Akademische Rätin) at the Department of the Study of Religions and curator of the Museum of  Religions (Religionskundliche Sammlung) at Marburg University. Triplett graduated in the Study of Religions, Japanese linguistics and Anthropology, and obtained her doctorate in Marburg. She held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions, SOAS, University of London (2004-5). Her main fields of interest are Japanese religions in the late medieval and early modern periods with a focus on visual representations. Triplett has also done research on ritual practices in modern Japan. She is currently working on Buddhist healing rituals.

Hendrik van der Veere (Leiden)

Hendrik van der Veere is lecturer at Leiden University, School of Asian Studies (SAS). Since his Ph.D. on Kakuban Shonin, his research is on systems of knowledge and their transmissions in Japanese Religion and Esoteric Buddhism from doctrinal, ritual and practical perspectives. The focus recently has been on esoteric ritual and lineage as well as pilgrimage.