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The Department of Religious Studies is pleased to announce that Dr. Wendi Adamek has been appointed to the Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies, starting January 1, 2014.
Born in Hawai’i, Dr. Wendi Adamek received her undergraduate, M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University. Her research and teaching interests center on Chinese religions and East Asian Buddhism, and she has taught previously at the University of Iowa, Barnard College, Columbia University, and the University of Sydney. She was a Fulbright Research Fellow at Kyoto University (1990) and Peking University (2004), a Stanford Humanities Center Fellow (2009), and also received research grants from the Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai (Numata), Jacob K. Javits Foundation, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, and the United States National Endowment for the Humanities. Her first book The Mystique of Transmission (2007), which won an Award for Excellence from the American Academy of Religion, explores a controversial eighth century Chan/Zen community in Sichuan. Included in the Translations from Asian Classics series of Columbia University Press, her most recent publication is The Teachings of Master Wuzhu: Zen and Religion of No-Religion (2011), which takes up provocative themes from her first book and presents her translation of a little-known Chan/Zen text in an accessible manner. Her current book project, Practicescape: The Buddhists of Baoshan, centers on a seventh-century eschatologically oriented community in Henan. Other interests include Daoism, Buddhist art, forest restoration, network theory, and environmental literature. A future book project on environmental and social issues is underway.
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RECENTLY RELEASED BOOKS
 | An Introduction to German Pietism: Protestant Renewal at the Dawn of Modern EuropeBy Douglas Shantz Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013 |
Taking into account new discoveries in the field, Douglas H. Shantz focuses on features of Pietism that made it religiously and culturally significant. He discusses the social and religious roots of Pietism in earlier German Radicalism and situates Pietist beginnings in three cities: Frankfurt, Leipzig, and Halle. Shantz also examines the cultural worlds of the Pietists, including Pietism and gender, Pietists as readers and translators of the Bible, and Pietists as missionaries to the far reaches of the world. He not only considers Pietism's role in shaping modern western religion and culture but also reflects on the relevance of the Pietist religious paradigms of today. | |
 | Re-imagining South Asian Religions: Essays in Honour of Professors Harold G. Coward and Ronald W. NeufeldtEdited by Pashaura Singh & Michael Hawley Brill, 2012 |
A collection of essays offering new ways of understanding aspects of Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, Theosophical, and Indian Christian experiences. Moving away from canonical texts, established authorities, and received historiography, the essays in this volume draw from a range of methodological perspectives including philosophy, history, hermeneutics, migration and diaspora studies, ethnography, performance studies, lived religion approaches, and aesthetics. Reflecting a balance of theory and substantive content, the papers in this volume call into question key critical terms, challenge established frames of reference, and offer innovative and alternative interpretations of South Asian ways of knowing and being. | |
Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of ReligionEdited by Morny Joy Springer, 2011 | |
This book is a survey of the work of twentieth-century Continental philosophy and its potential impact on philosophy of religion as it is has been practiced predominantly in English-speaking countries. Major French thinkers such as Ricoeur, Levinas, Derrida, Foucault and Marion are included, as well as Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. The influence of the Frankfurt school of critical theory, exemplified today by Jürgen Habermas, is also acknowledged. In the English-speaking domain, philosophy of religion has been principally identified with analytic philosophy, where the universal presumptions of an abstract reason, especially with reference to matters of belief and its justification, have dominated. In this tradition, truth pertains to an objective frame of reference, which is based both on logical arguments and modes of verification. In contrast, Continental philosophy does not demarcate a specific area or subject matter that is designated as belonging to philosophy of religion. The boundaries between disciplines and their ideas are much more fluid. As a result, questions regarding religion can be located with reference to specific themes within a worldview that allows for a wide range of influences. In Continental philosophy also there is a greater appreciation of historical and cultural influences on the formation of philosophy's structures and procedures. At the same time, there is a move to greater self-reflexivity and a growing awareness of the need to formulate a distinct ethics of intersubjectivity that seeks justice. The terms of reference have indubitably been changed. Fascinating developments are today occurring as contemporary Continental philosophers explore new possibilities for formulating and responding to traditional philosophical problems in relation to religion from this more expansive perspective. |
After Appropriation: Explorations in Intercultural Philosophy and ReligionEdited by Morny Joy University of Calgary Press, 2011 | |
After Appropriation is the first book to undertake a comprehensive study of questions in comparative philosophy and religion. While the division between the two disciplines of Religious Studies and Philosophy is commonplace in western academia, this bifurcation does not necessarily apply in non-western settings, where religion and philosophy tend to be integrated. As a result, when the disciplines are virtually mutually exclusive, as in the West, a full appreciation of non-Western approaches to either religion or philosophy is not easily attained, and distortions, such as appropriation, often occur. Within the last ten years, there has been a concerted effort on the part of a number of Western scholars to try to address these deficiencies and re-examine many ideas that have been misappropriated or otherwise excluded. These errors have resulted from a traditional approach where the religions and philosophies of non-Western peoples have been interpreted by reducing or manipulating their ideas and values to fit within Western concepts and categories. This project is conducted with full awareness of the post-colonial critique of such enterprises. One of the central questions addressed is how comparative philosophy and religion would change if the concepts and categories of non-Western philosophies and religions were taken as of equal importance. |
Christian Thought in the Twenty-First Century: Agenda for the FutureEdited by Douglas H. Shantz and Tinu Ruparell Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2012 | |
| In this volume some of the outstanding Christian scholars of our day reflect on how their minds have changed, how their academic fields have changed over the course of their careers, and the pressing issues that Christian scholars will need to address in the twenty-first century. This volume offers an accessible portrait of key trends in the world of Christian scholarship today. Christian Thought in the Twenty-First Century features scholars from Great Britain, Canada, the United States, and Switzerland. The contributors represent a wide variety of academic backgrounds—from biblical studies to theology, to religious studies, to history, English literature, philosophy, law, and ethics. This book offers a personal glimpse of Christian scholars in a self-reflective mode, capturing their honest reflections on the changing state of the academy and on changes in their own minds and outlooks. The breadth and depth of insight afforded by these contributions provide rich soil for a reader's own reflections, and an agenda that will occupy Christian thinkers well into the twenty-first century. |
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