The Five College Buddhist Studies faculty, along with interested scholars from other institutions in the area, meets three or four times each semester. We discuss recent or in-progress work of seminar members or of invited scholars, as well as new and important work in the field.
If you are interested in participating in our seminar, please e-mail Andy Rotman.
Recent Talks
December 13, 2012
Kristin Scheible, Bard College
"Instructions, Admonitions, and Aspirations in Vamsa Proems"
November 8, 2012
Lkham Purevjav, Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Institute of History; Visiting Professor, Smith College
"Reformation of 5th Bogda Jibzundamba and Development of Monastic Education in Mongolia"
October 4, 2012
Benjamin Bogin, Georgetown University
"Chokgyur-lingpa's Visionary Journey to the Copper-Colored Mountain"
September 20, 2012
Felicity Aulino, Five College Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
"Perceiving the Social Body: A 'Practical' Phenomenology of Care in Larger Context"
April 26, 2012
Marilyn Rhie, Smith College
“Iconography of the Five Buddhas: Binglingsi Cave 169, Gandhara, Hadda, and the Tanyao Caves at Yungang”
March 28, 2012
Yasuo Deguchi, Kyoto University
“Buddha Body as a Trope”
March 15, 2012
Rick Taupier, University of Massachusetts Amherst
“Religious and Political Motivation Behind the Western Mongolian Clear Script”
February 9, 2012
Chakravarti Ram-Prasad,
Lancaster University
“Self, No-Self, and Unitary Consciousness: Hindu-Buddhist Engagement and Contemporary Debates”
November 3, 2011
Maria Heim, Amherst College
“Mind in Theravada Buddhism”
October 13, 2011
David L. Gardiner, Colorado
College
“Paths Across Borders: Comparative Reflections on Japanese and Indo-Tibetan Models of the Buddhist
Path”
September 29, 2011
Mark Blum, SUNY Albany
“How the Lotus Doth Bloom in Nirvana: On the Relationship Between the Mahāparinirvāna
and Saddharmapundarīka
sūtras”
September 15, 2011
Jay Garfield, Smith College
“I am a Brain in a Vat (Or Perhaps a Pile of Sticks By the Side of the Road)”
April 28, 2011
Dan Lusthaus, Harvard University
“A Note on Medicine and Psychosomatic Relations in the First Two Bhūmis of Yogācārabhūmi”
Jay Garfield, Smith College, was the respondent.
April 7, 2011
Guy Newland, Central Michigan University
“Betraying Emptiness: Translating Tibetan Retextualizations of Madhyamaka Philosophy”
March 24, 2011
William Waldron, Middlebury College
“A Yogācāra Exchange with the Cognitive Theory of Religion”
December 9, 2010
Jacob Dalton, University of California, Berkeley
“Liturgies, Ritual Manuals, and the Origins of the Tantras”
November 11, 2010
Tom Tillemans, University of Lausanne
“Madhyamaka Buddhist Ethics”
Watch the lecture | Watch the Q&A
April 23-25, 2010
Madhyamaka and Methodology: A Symposium on Buddhist Theory and Method
March 25, 2010
Shrikant Bahulkar, Harvard University & Central University of Tibetan Studies
“Ideology and Language Identity: A Buddhist Perspective”
Jay Garfield, Smith College, was the respondent.
March 4, 2010
James Robson, Harvard University
“Sacred Geography in Medieval Chinese Buddhism”
Peter Gregory, Smith College, was the respondent.
November 12, 2009
Kim Gutschow, Williams College
“The Global in the Local: Buddhism, Biomedicine, and ‘Safe Motherhood’ in India”
Maria Heim, Amherst
College, was the respondent.
November 5, 2009
Sandy Gentei Stewart, Abbot of the North Carolina Zen Center
“Ascending the High Seat, Chapter One: A Text from the Rinza Record”
October 15, 2009
Ryan Joo, Hampshire College
“Countercurrents from the West: Blue-eyed Zen Masters, Vipassana Meditation, and Buddhist Psychotherapy
in Contemporary Korea”
Susanne Mrozik, Mount Holyoke College, was the respondent.
September 24, 2009
Peter Gregory, Smith College
“The Platform Sutra as the Sudden Teaching”
Jay Garfield, Smith College, was the respondent.
April 9, 2009
Bronwyn Finnigan, University of Auckland
“Buddhist Meta-Ethics: Ethical Theory, Action and Epistemology”
Maria Heim, of Amherst College, was the respondent.
March 12, 2009
Jason Ananda Josephson, Williams College
“The Invention of ‘Religion’ in Japan”
Jamie Hubbard, Smith College, was the respondent.
January 29, 2009
Reiko Ohnuma, Dartmouth College
“Mother-Love and Mother-Grief: South Asian Buddhist Variations on a Theme”
Kristin Scheible, Bard College, was the respondent.
December 9, 2008
Susanne Mrozik, Mount Holyoke College
“A Robed Revolution: The Contemporary Buddhist Nuns Movement”
Ryan Joo, Hampshire College, was the respondent.
November 13, 2008
Maria Heim, Amherst College
“Selections from The Springs of Action: Buddhist Theories of Intention”
Georges Dreyfus, Williams College, was the respondent.
October 9, 2008
Georges Dreyfus, Williams College
“Selfless Subjectivity: A Middle-Way Approach to Consciousness”
Jay Garfield, Smith College, was the respondent.
