Stories

In August, Heather Clydesdale (Art and Art History) participated in two intensive Buddhist-studies institutes and conferences that brought together scholars from Asia, Europe, and the United States. They were held at the ancient monasteries of Zhulin Temple on the sacred site of Wutai shan in the mountains of north China, and Nanputuo Temple in Xiamen, a lively seaport on the southeast coast. At the first conference, the “Canonical, Non-Canonical and Extra-Canonical: Interdisciplinary and Multi-media Studies of the Formation, Translation and Transmission of Buddhist Texts,” Heather chaired a dual-language panel on “Media and Modernity.” At the second, “Microcosm Holds Mountains and Seas: The Sinicization of Buddhism in the ‘Multi-layered Contextualization’ from Local to Global History,” she chaired the Chinese-language panel “Expansion and Contraction of Dharma through State-church Interactions” and presented a paper “The Eternal in the Contemporary: Manifesting Buddhist Doctrine in Architecture Today” as part of a dual-language session on "Media in the Transmission of Sacred and Secular Knowledge.”

Participation in the institutes and conferences were supported by the Glorisun Global Network of Buddhist Studies. In addition to scholarly inquiries and exchanges, the experience revealed shifting intersections between organized religion, academia, and local politics in China today.