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Oct
8
Tue
2024
Public lecture series “Buddhist Cultural Heritage Past and Present” @ University Club in Santa Barbara
Oct 8 @ 4:30 pm – Dec 12 @ 7:00 pm

Fall Public Lecture Series

 

Throughout the fall of 2024, international specialists will present to a broad public audience aspects of the rich cultural heritage of Buddhism (material culture, music, texts, and visual arts) and its impact on contemporary culture in Asia and beyond.

Organized by Vesna A. Wallace and Fabio Rambelli (Religious Studies, UCSB).

This series is part of the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

All lectures will be held at the University Club of Santa Barbara (https://www.uclubsb.org/)

October 8 professor Michael Como (Columbia University) “Buddhism, Written Language, and the Religious Revolution in Eighth Century Japan”

October 29 professor Vesna Wallace (UCSB) “Text and Image Relations in Mongolian Buddhism”

November 19 composer Daryl Jamieson (Kyushu University, Japan) “Buddhist Influences in Contemporary Music”

December 12 professor Sunmin Yoon (University of Delaware) “The Sacred and the Secular in the Practice of the Mongolian Buddhist Songs”

All lectures are open to the general public. For information, please contact the University Club of Santa Barbara.

For members of the UCSB community, please contact Fabio Rambelli (rambelli@ucsb.edu) or Vesna Wallace (vesna.wallace@ucsb.edu).

Supported by Luce Foundation and American Academy of Religion, Robert N.H. Ho Family Foundation Global, the Uberoy Foundation, and the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Nov
13
Wed
2024
Lecture by Dr. Or Porath “Warriors and Whispers: The Rationale for Love and War in Medieval Japanese Buddhism” @ UCSB SSMS 2135
Nov 13 @ 4:45 pm – 6:30 pm
Warriors and Whispers: The Rationale for Love and War in Medieval Japanese Buddhism
“A Long Tale for an Autumn Night” (Aki no yo no naga monogatari) is an illustrated narrative scroll (emaki) dated to the 14th or 15th century, presently held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. It is the earliest pictorial work belonging to the so-called genre of chigo monogatari (“acolyte tales”). This genre consists of stories that revolve around the infatuation of an older monk with a young monastic acolyte (chigo). In this tale, the male-male love affair leads to intense military warfare between competing factions of the Tendai tradition, Enryakuji and Miidera, the two lineages from which the lovers respectively hailed. The plot culminates in the suicide of the young boy, Umewaka, and the realization that the boy was, in fact, a manifestation of the bodhisattva of compassion, Kannon, of the temple Ishiyama-dera. This tragic ending also elicits the monk’s own renunciation of carnal desire and prompts him to accept the life of a Buddhist recluse. The scroll is known for its iji dōzu (“synoptic narrative) technique, wherein multiple parts of a story are illustrated within a single compositional frame. The tale has been considered one of the greatest masterpieces of medieval literature, and has been a subject for debate in multiple disciplines including art history, literature, religious studies, and others.
The presentation explores the manifold themes and aspects of this painted work, ranging from doctrinal matters, the relationship between visual art and narrative text, and the religious rationalization of war and tragedy.
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     Dr. Or Porath is an Assistant Professor at Tel Aviv University. He serves as the Vice-President of the Society for the Study of Japanese Religions and as an associate editor for the journal Japanese Religions. After earning his PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2019, he taught at the University of Chicago (2019–2021) and at Leiden University in the Netherlands (2022–2023), before joining Tel Aviv University.
     Porath specializes in Buddhist Studies and East Asian religions, with a focus on the history of Buddhist monasticism. He is a scholar of Japanese religions, particularly focusing on the influential Tendai school of Buddhism and its doctrines and practices, as well as the intersection between the medieval Buddhist worldview and sexuality. Porath is the co-editor of <Rituals of Initiation and Consecration in Premodern Japan: Power and Legitimacy in Kingship, Religion, and the Arts> (with Fabio Rambelli, 2022). His articles and translations have been published in several edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Religion in Japan, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Religions, and the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth.
Porath’s current book project, tentatively titled <The Dharma of Sex: Initiation, Deification, and Passion in Medieval Japanese Buddhism>, explores the “consecration of acolytes” (chigo kanjō) and how male-male sexual acts were sanctified and legitimized within Tendai doctrinal thought and monastic society. The book demonstrates that this sexual initiation ritual not only redefined the relationship between monks and their acolytes but also provided a framework for institutionalizing and rationalizing male-male sexuality, aligning it with the broader constellation of medieval doctrine.
Nov
19
Tue
2024
The Material Girls of Early Christianity: Voices from the 25% @ HSSB 4080
Nov 19 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
The Material Girls of Early Christianity: Voices from the 25% @ HSSB 4080

A mini conference featuring three lectures highlighting the relationship between early Christianity and ancient Mediterranean material culture. The 25% in the title refers to the percentage of the membership of the Society of Biblical Literature who identify as women. This event promotes their contributions.

Lectures by:

Prof. Roberta Mazza, Associate Professor of Papyrology, University of Bologna

Prof. Jorunn Økland, Director, Norwegian Institue at Athens; Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Oslo

Prof. Christine M. Thomas, Virgil Cordano OFM Endowed Chair in Catholic Studies, Department of Religious Studies, University of California

sponsored by
the Virgil Cordano OFM Endowed Chair in Catholic Studies, Department of Religious Studies, UCSB
the History Department, UCSB
the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group, Interdepartmental Humanities Center, UCSB

 

Public lecture “Buddhist Influences in Contemporary Music” by Daryl Jamieson (Kyushu University)
Nov 19 @ 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm

This lecture is part of the “Buddhist Cultural Heritage Past and Present” organized by Vesna A. Wallace and Fabio Rambelli (Religious Studies, UCSB) in the context of the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

University Club of Santa Barbara (https://www.uclubsb.org/)

Open to the general public. For information, please contact the University Club of Santa Barbara.

For members of the UCSB community, please contact Fabio Rambelli (rambelli@ucsb.edu) or Vesna Wallace (vesna.wallace@ucsb.edu).

Supported by Luce Foundation and American Academy of Religion, Robert N.H. Ho Family Foundation Global, the Uberoy Foundation, and the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Nov
20
Wed
2024
Lecture “Old Seeds in New Soil: Constructing Shinto Space and Place Outside of Japan” by Kaitlyn Ugoretz @ UCSB SSMS 2135
Nov 20 @ 4:45 pm – 6:15 pm

Old Seeds in New Soil: Constructing Shinto Space and Place Outside of Japan

Shinto is popularly imagined as a ritual tradition coterminous with Japanese ethnicity, culture, and geography. Historically hailed as a “divine realm/nation” (*shinkoku*), the Japanese archipelago is home to a sacred landscape of shrines, mountains, forests, rivers, and seas inhabited by deities called *kami*. Where and how then does Shinto ritual take place outside of Japan? Based on ethnographic research among global Shinto communities, this talk examines approaches to the reterritorialization of Shinto, particularly in North America. Ugoretz analyzes how global Shinto communities’ production/construction of ritual space and place reinscribe traditional definitions of the religion as well as notions of Japaneseness, establishing a hierarchy that often privileges “Japanized” spaces. However, recent developments
concerning environmentalism and digital technology suggest emergent universalist orientations toward Shinto space.

Kaitlyn Ugoretz is Lecturer and Associate Editor for Publications at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture (Nagoya, Japan) and finishing her PhD in EALCS at UCSB. She is an anthropologist of religion studying the globalization
of Shinto, digital technology, and media. Ugoretz is also the host of the award-winning educational YouTube channel, *Eat Pray Anime*.

Organized by Fabio Rambelli. Supported by the UCSB Department of Religious Studies and UCSB Shinto Studies Chair.

Dec
12
Thu
2024
Public lecture “The Sacred and the Secular in the Practice of Mongolian Buddhist Songs” by Sunmin Yoon (University of Delaware) @ University Club in Santa Barbara
Dec 12 @ 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm

This lecture is part of the “Buddhist Cultural Heritage Past and Present” organized by Vesna A. Wallace and Fabio Rambelli (Religious Studies, UCSB) in the context of the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

University Club of Santa Barbara (https://www.uclubsb.org/)

Open to the general public. For information, please contact the University Club of Santa Barbara.

For members of the UCSB community, please contact Fabio Rambelli (rambelli@ucsb.edu) or Vesna Wallace (vesna.wallace@ucsb.edu).

Supported by Luce Foundation and American Academy of Religion, Robert N.H. Ho Family Foundation Global, the Uberoy Foundation, and the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Mar
3
Mon
2025
International Conference “The Makers of Buddhism” @ Rob Gym 1005
Mar 3 – Mar 5 all-day

Organized by Fabio Rambelli and Vesna A. Wallace (UCSB), with the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. With support from The Robert N.H. Ho Family Foundation Global, the Uberoy Foundation, UCSB Chair in Shinto Studies, and others TBA

Description and program coming soon!