University of Chicago

Faculty Member, East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Tenuous

About

Teaching and Research Interests:

Tang-Song religious texts and practices; intellectual, material, and visual cultures of Chinese Buddhism, ca. 700-1200; Dunhuang manuscripts and manuscriptology; ritual studies.

I’m working on a book on Chinese Buddhist ritual practice at Dunhuang in the ninth and tenth centuries with the working title “Manuscript Culture, the Emergence of the Block Print, and the Practice of Buddhism at Dunhuang.” As the title suggests, my interest in this project is to understand the character of certain forms of religious practice that centered (at least in part) on books—that is, on manuscript and xylograph scrolls, codices, and individual sheets of paper containing ritual manuals, spell books, chanting breviaries, ritual icons, and scriptures. One goal of the project is to examine the overlap between manuscript and ritual cultures in Chinese Buddhism at the end of what is often considered its “medieval” period, particularly in the scribal practices of ritual experts and what they can tell us about both the nature of surviving manuscript sources and about the history of Buddhist ritual practice. Another is to explore the differences between manuscript and early xylograph sources found at Dunhuang, and to understand the transformations wrought on Chinese Buddhist practice by the rise of block printing and the initial spread of printed ritual materials. The project as a whole allows me to engage my deep interests in the “archaeology of the book” and in material culture more broadly as ways to explore, in as much detail as possible, the nature of local styles of religious practice in the Tang, Liao, Five Dynasties, and Northern Song periods.

As well, I maintain a strong interest in the history of religious thought and exegetical practice during the “Tang-Song transition,” particularly, and very broadly, in the cross-fertilizations characteristic of what are sometimes called “Buddho-Daoist” styles of thought and ritual action.

My graduate teaching focuses on the philological close reading of texts in their historical (and often material) contexts, as well as critical engagement with the fields of Sinology and Religious Studies.

Publications:

    The Body Incantatory: Material Incantation in Chinese Buddhist Practice, 600-1000. (Columbia University Press, forthcoming)
    “Two Dunhuang Handbooks of Buddho-Daoist Ritual: P. 2153 and P. 2602.” (article in process)
    “Seals and the Sources of Chinese Buddhism: Archaeological and Textual Evidence.” (article in process)
    “Manuscript Culture as Ritual Culture in Late Medieval Dunhuang: Buddhist Seals and Their Manuals.” (Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, forthcoming 2012)
    “Anointing Phrases and Narrative Power: A Tang Buddhist Poetics of Incantation.” (History of Religions, forthcoming, 2012)
    "Altar, Amulet, Icon: Transformations in Dhāraṇī Amulet Culture, 740-980." Studies in Chinese Art History, Edited by Lothar von Falkenhausen, Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 17 (2008 [published 2010]): 239-264.
    "Notes on the Term 'Dhāraṇī' in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Thought." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 71, 3 (2008), 493–508.
    "Religion in the Sui and Tang Dynasties," in the Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions, ed. Randall Nadeau (London: Blackwell Publications, forthcoming 2012).
    "Esoteric Buddhism in Song Dynasty Sichuan," "Dhāraṇī Scriptures," "Prajña (744 - ca. 810)," and "Visualization and Contemplation," in Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia, ed. Charles Orzech, et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2011).

Courses:

    Chinese Buddhist Texts and Thought (Grad Seminar, Winter 2012)
    Buddhism and the West (with James Ketelaar; Undergrad/Grad, Autumn 2011)
    Manuscripts, Material Culture, and Ritual Practice (Grad Seminar, Spring 2010)
    Readings in Chinese Buddhist Texts (Grad Seminar, Winter 2008, 2010)
    Chinese Buddhism (Undergrad, Autumn 2009, Winter 2012)
    Esoteric Buddhism in Tang China: Yixing’s Commentary on the Mahāvairocana Sūtra (Grad Seminar, Winter 2009)
    Sources and Methods in the Study of Daoism (Grad Seminar, Autumn 2008)
    Classics of Chinese Religious Thought (Undergrad, Autumn 2007, 2008)
    Sources and Methods in the Study of Chinese Buddhism (Grad Seminar, Autumn 2007)