"Recent Research on Chinese Religions" Roundtable at Atlanta AAR 11/22/15

H-Asia "Recent Research on Chinese Religions" Roundtable at Atlanta AAR 11/22/15

Discussion published by Rebecca Nedostup on Friday, November 6, 2015

The Society for the Study of Chinese Religions warmly invites anyone attending the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting to our roundtable, "Recent Research on Chinese Religions," 11:30-1:00 on Sunday, 11/22, in International Ballroom C of the Atlanta Marriott Marquis. Wei Wu will introduce research for her dissertation, "Seeking Dharma from Tibet: Indigenization of Tibetan Buddhism in Twentieth-Century China" and Ting Guo will speak on "The Transformation of a 'Cosmopolitan House Church' in Shanghai: Biographical Methods and New Approaches." We hope you will join us for this session highlighting the work of young scholars in the field.

Details: Wei WU, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Religion, Princeton University "Seeking Dharma from Tibet: Indigenization of Tibetan Buddhism in Twentieth-Century China"

This research focuses on the indigenization of Tibetan Buddhism in China in the early twentieth century. My dissertation, “Seeking Dharma from Tibet: Indigenization of Tibetan Buddhism in Twentieth-Century China,” examines the transmission of Tibetan Buddhism in the Republican period (1912-1949), with a focus on the rise of a Tibetan Gelug lineage founded by Nenghai (1886-1967) in Sichuan province. Previous scholarship has uncovered the fascination of Chinese Buddhists with Japanese and Tibetan Buddhism and discussed the role of Buddhists in the making of a modern Chinese state. This study looks at the specifics of the doctrines, praxis, and institutional formations in Nenghai’s lineage, adding a new perspective by arguing for a creative synthesis of Tibetan and Chinese elements. I propose that the indigenization of Tibetan Buddhism in the Chinese context was a dialectical process involving translation and transformation. I view indigenization as a succession of contacts during which new meanings were generated. My dissertation shows how Nenghai and his disciples strategically adapted Tibetan traditions to the Chinese Buddhist world. My talk at the SSCR session at AAR on Nov. 22 will focus on the founding history of the lineage and assess the interplay of Tibetan and Chinese traditions.

Ting GUO, PhD, Department of Religious Studies, University of Edinburgh; Postdoctoral Fellow, Purdue University "The Transformation of a 'Cosmopolitan House Church' in Shanghai: Biographical Methods and New Approaches"

Instead of drawing the line at the tensions and conflicts between politics and religion, I explore, on a micro level, how liberal theology constituted an intellectual source for modern Chinese nationalism through the story of an Episcopalian family in Shanghai. In doing so, I suggest new ways of looking at Chinese Christian practice and theology by introducing the framework of “cosmopolitan church” as a type of Christian organization that strategize its way through social and political changes. I will introduce a biographical method that investigates, “from the inside out”, how faith, identity and ideology are experienced and articulated by individuals themselves. In the case of this family, my study spans from their fellowship initiated during the Republic of China (1912-1949) to its current

Citation: Rebecca Nedostup. "Recent Research on Chinese Religions" Roundtable at Atlanta AAR 11/22/15. H-Asia. 11-06-2015. https://networks.h-net.org/node/22055/discussions/94415/recent-research-chinese-religions-roundtable-atlanta-aar-112215 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Asia from as an “underground” house church that nonetheless integrates with a state-sanctioned Three- Self Church. By examining how the past was remembered within a theologically negotiated space, my approach seeks to highlight the dynamism by which the active instrumentalization and appropriation of global Christian activism that served to construct a post-imperial Chinese identity was transformed to a transnational focus on civil society.