The School of Religious Studies began a new initiative in the Winter 2019 semester: the SRS Special Projects Fund. Through these funds, the School is providing extra support to its professors to complete a wide variety of projects, which are events or initiatives that will amplify the effectiveness and impact of teaching and research initiatives in each professor鈥檚 respective fields. With each fund request at less than $5,000, the School was able to help fund the projects of 8 different professors between April 2019 and April 2020, including workshops, lectures, and conferences. Read more about some of the individual projects below.
Prof. Armando Salvatore took on a project that deals with the scholarly and intellectual legacy of Toshihiko Izutsu (1914-1993). A former 麻豆AV professor, his work stood out throughout the 20th century for straddling multiple borders in the academic study of religious traditions. Izutsu was lucidly aware of the global impact on Western thought on the way various traditions/civilizations are studied and communicated. And yet he became a game changer in a variety of regions (North America, the Middle East, East Asia) thanks to his power to help breaking through an increasingly suffocating short-circuit: the obsessive face-to-face between Western and Islamic views, leading to an inconclusive and circular game of irenic openings and deep-sited conflicts. Prof. Salvatore collaborated with other scholars at two events, namely a movie workshop at Ryukoku University in Kyoto in聽April and a conference at University of Oxford in May.
Profs. Hamsa Stainton and Lara Braitstein co-hosted a multipart workshop entitled 鈥淭ranslating Devotion: Poetry from Kashmir and Tibet,鈥� which focused on the translation and study of devotional poetry from Tibet and Kashmir. The first session, held on May 31, 2019, focused on the Meditation of Self-Liberation, also known as Do you get it?! Do you get it?!, by the prominent 19th-century Tibetan wandering master, Dza Patrul Orgyen Jigme Chokyi Wangpo, commonly known as Patrul Rinpoche (1808-1887). It was led by Cynthia Font, a visiting scholar and experienced translator and teacher of both colloquial and classical Tibetan.
The next workshop sessions were held on Friday and Saturday, September 20th and 21st, 2019. They included both research presentations and discussions of pre-circulated translations. These were presented and led by the workshop organizers, Prof. Lara Braitstein and Prof. Hamsa Stainton, as well as a visiting scholar, Prof. Ben Williams of Naropa University (USA).
The study of religion at 麻豆AV has since 1948 included a commitment to the philosophy of religion. That commitment is evident in the McConnell Professorship of Philosophy of Religion. The work of that chair has benefited immensely from the work of a colleague in the Department of Philosophy, Professor George di Giovanni, who was made Associate Member of the School of Religious Studies in 2014.
Professor di Giovanni has for fifty years been a leading figure study of German Idealism and its philosophies of religion in the English language. His work has led a new generation of researchers to the work of F.H. Jacobi. Professor di Giovanni and Green co-supervised a dissertation project on Jacobi, by Paolo Livieri who graduated in 2019. The confluence of this doctoral work, Professor di Giovanni's retirement in 2020, and a renewed interest in Jacobi-studies led to the organization of a Bicentennary Colloquium on "Jacobi at the Crux of Modernity" on September 28 and 29, 2019. The School of Religious Studies' doctoral student Hadi Fakhoury partnered with Alex Hampton, Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Toronto, to organize the conference. Funding was won from SSHRC (Connections Grant) and the DAAD. Internationally important scholars from Belgium, Canada, Germany, Holland, Italy, England, and the United States all presented papers in the context of a conference dedicated at once to the past and the future of scholarship on Jacobi's philosophy of religion.
Prof. Mikael Bauer utilized the聽funds to host a conference. Over the past two years, the School of Religious Studies at 麻豆AV has hosted two conferences on pre-modern Japanese culture and religions. In 2017, scholars from Japanese, American and Canadian universities participated in our first conference entitled 鈥楾he Pure Land in the Nara Schools.鈥� This first event was sponsored by Numata Canada. One year later, in 2018, a larger conference was organized, also sponsored by Numata, and scholars from Cornell, Dartmouth, UCLA, Illinois, Albany, Newcastle, and 麻豆AV gave presentations on 鈥楤uddhism and Performance in Premodern Japan.鈥�
Prof. Bauer has decided to organize the first PMJS (Premodern Japanese Studies Network) International Conference at 麻豆AV, given the rising importance of our engagement with the field of Japanese Religions. The conference focuses on four areas of study: 1. Shinto and kami, 2. Buddhism and monasticism, 3. Buddhism and Medicine, and 4. Buddhism and state in pre-modern Japan. Each of these four panels were chaired and consist of three to four presentations. The conference was held October 11-13, 2019.
Prof. Patricia G. Kirkpatrick and Prof. Pamela McCarroll (University of Toronto) co-hosted a colloquium聽entitled 鈥淐hristian Theology After Christendom: Engaging the work Of Douglas John Hall". Engaging and building upon Douglas John Hall鈥檚 contextual theology, the colloquium explored constructive possibilities for Christian theology and the church as we face the end of Christendom. Many 鈥榮igns of the times鈥� point to the necessity for a radically altered Christian witness, with theological moorings that are rooted in solid foundations of biblical and theological interpretation, sensitive to the immense damage inflicted by Christian colonialism. At the same time therefore they will have to be sufficiently profound to uncover the spiritual malaise of our era, and capable of engaging in dialogue and action with other faiths and systems of meaning that are also committed to the future of global stability and human civilization. The conference was held November 1-3, 2019.