Syllabus for Japanese Mythology Spring 2021

My contribution to the Immanent Frame project on “Pandemic, Religion, and Public Life.” It’s a story on disease, divine protection, and penance ritual. What can early Japanese Buddhism teach us about our present moment?

This is a story of the possibilities created by connection but also of the inherent fragility of movement within a network. It uses a case study of roads in ancient Japan (defined as late seventh through early ninth centuries) to show how networks not only amplify interaction but also isolation. This article explores the religious implications of…[Read more]

Syllabus for a graduate reading course on secondary scholarship on Japanese Buddhism

Syllabus for graduate seminar on premodern Japanese Buddhist texts from fall of 2019

Syllabus for Religion in Japanese Culture from the fall of 2020.

Syllabus for my course on Zen Buddhism from spring 2020.

Genevieve Lloyd argues that when we follow Spinoza in understanding reason as a part of nature, we gain new insights into the human condition. Specifically, we gain a new political insight: we should respond to cultural difference with a pluralist ethos. This is because there is no pure universal reason; human minds find their reason shaped…[Read more]

Students often have difficulty connecting theoretical and text-based scholarship to the real world. When teaching in Asia, this disconnection is exacerbated by the European/American focus of many canonical texts, whereas students’ own experiences are primarily Asian. However, in my discipline of political philosophy, this problem receives little…[Read more]