↓ A list of the courses I teach on a regular basis and other teaching-related events.

Plagued by vengeful spirits, pursued by demons, and possessed by foxes — such were the experiences of many throughout Japanese history. This course explores otherworldly encounters in Japan from ancient times until today. Readings include popular tales, hagiographies, illustrated scrolls, ritual texts, and gothic short stories. We also consider the emergence of academic disciplines in the late-nineteenth century such as native ethnology (minzokugaku) and psychology (shinrigaku) meant to defang the weird as the populace confronted a changing technological landscape of — as rumor would have it — electric lines fueled by human oil, hospitals staffed with vampiric physicians, and ghost trains.

◎ Taught at Oberlin in summer ‘21 and spring ‘21.

❶ Haunted Archipelago: Ghosts, Spirits, and the Occult in Japanese Religion

❷ Religious Rituals in East Asia

“East Asian Religion in Eight Rituals”

College courses on religious ritual tend to adopt a top-down approach to the subject that emphasizes anthropological and religious studies “theory.” Instead, this class proposes we look at ritual from the ground up by conducting case studies of specific rituals at the heart of diverse forms of religion in East Asia. Every ritual selected for our study crosses historical, geographic, and traditional boundaries: while historically rooted in premodern traditions, their adapted performances can still be observed today. Moreover, most of these rituals have been practiced in multiple regions in East Asia (defined here as China, Korea, and Japan) with several that have traveled to North America. Some of these rituals represent familiar categories of religions — Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Shintō — while others reside betwixt and between these categories as hybrid forms or circulate between various religious and secular groups. We query the boundaries between religion, ritual, performance, theater, play, and mimesis.

Together with the symmetrical course below, Religious Objects in East Asia, this course aims to provide an alternative approach to traditional courses on religion by working from the ground up, using case studies structured by a salient theme.

◎ Taught at Oberlin Fall ‘19, ‘20, ‘21, and ‘23.

“East Asian Religion in Ten Objects”

The religions of East Asia have long been associated with a wholesale rejection of the material world. We are told that Daoist immortals seek to shed their physical bodies and return to the “formless Dao”; that Confucian scholars are cerebral intellectuals promoting an abstract ethical system; that Shinto priests avoid representing their gods (kami) in concrete physical forms; and that Buddhist monks renounce attachments to all personal objects and wealth. Yet recent trends in religious studies, focusing on the importance of material and visual culture, have called these commonplace images into question. In this class we follow these newer approaches to explore the central role that material things have played (and continue to play) in East Asian religions. Our entrance into this topic is a series of ten case studies, each focused on a material object that has shaped religious dynamics in China, Korea, and Japan throughout history: sūtras, talismans, hair, corpses, silk, monastic robes, imperial regalia, icons, aromatics, and tea.

Together with the symmetrical course above, Religious Rituals in East Asia, this course aims to provide an alternative approach to traditional courses on religion by working from the ground up, using case studies structured by a salient theme.

◎ Taught at Oberlin Spring ‘20 and ‘22, and Summer ‘21.

❸ Religious Objects in East Asia

❹ Buddhism, Healing, and the Body in East Asia

This seminar introduces students to the intersections between Buddhism and medicine in East Asia in the premodern period. The course begins with the Buddhist perspective on health, disease, and the body in ancient India over two millennia ago, and follows the eastward transmission of Buddhist healthcare into China and Japan until roughly the sixteenth century. In addition to secondary studies representing the latest research in this growing subfield of Buddhist studies, this course gives special attention to the close reading and interpretation of primary source texts recently made available for the first time in English translation. We will read sūtras (scriptures), vinaya (monastic regulations), recipe collections, prescriptive ritual documents, tracts on medical ethics, hagiographies of wonder-working Buddhist healers, and longevity manuals. By analyzing these selections through multiple methodological frameworks—history of the body, medical anthropology, and material culture, we hope to gain an appreciation of the rich diversity and complexity that characterizes Buddhist healthcare and practices of the body prior to the arrival of western medicine. Along the way, we will examine traditional medical cultures that shaped and were shaped by Buddhism, including Ayurveda in South Asia, classical Chinese medicine, Daoist ritual healing, and courtier medicine in Japan.

◎ Taught at Oberlin Spring ‘20 and ‘22 and Summer ‘21, and Columbia University in Spring 2018.

This course offers a broad introduction to Buddhist history, culture, doctrine, and practice, focusing specifically on the transmission and reception of Buddhism in East Asia. Moving geographically from South and Central Asia to China, Korea, and Japan, we explore the many different transformations undergone by this religious tradition over its two and a half millennia of existence. Our reading of primary sources offers deep engagement with Buddhist ideas and practices, allowing us to understand how the religion shaped the ways people in pre-modern Asia saw and interacted with each other and the worlds they inhabited. Secondary sources help us set these materials in historical context and connect them to the bigger picture of Buddhism’s spread across Asia. In the process we will engage themes such as the meaning of suffering, the nature of the universe, the social role of monasticism and its intervention in traditional family structures, the place of women and gender in Buddhism, the relationship between religious ideals and everyday life, continuity and change in Buddhist history, the question of self-reliance versus divine assistance, and the mysteries of Buddhist icons.

◎ Taught at Oberlin College in Fall ‘20, ‘21, ‘22, and ‘23, and at New York University (NYU) in Fall 2018

❺ Introduction to Religion: Buddhism in East Asia