Department Chair; Professor of Buddhist and Chinese Studies
About
Research interests:
I work on the history of religion in China, with a particular focus on Buddhism. My first book, Patrons and Patriarchs: Regional Rulers and Chan Monks during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), examined the tumultuous century that spanned the collapse of the Tang dynasty (618–907) and the consolidation of the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127). This was the period when Chan (Zen) clerics, who represented a relatively minor undercurrent in mainstream Buddhism during the Tang dynasty, rose to become some of the most culturally and politically significant clerics of the empire. I have explored other facets of Buddhism during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms in a series of articles.
My second and third books center on the great Buddhist cleric Xuanzang (600/602–664). Xuanzang: China’s Legendary Pilgrim and Translator (Shambhala, 2021) provides a biographical overview, a selection of Xuanzang’s work in translation, and discussions of his enduring influence in East Asia. Embodying Xuanzang: The Postmortem Travels of a Buddhist Pilgrim (University of Hawai’i Press, 2023) explores hidden histories of Xuanzang’s many afterlives. Beginning in the eleventh century and continuing to the present day, it describes how devotees summoned Xuanzang and his band of misfit pilgrims to perform exorcisms, guide the spirits of the dead, and possess the bodies of insurgents. Other work related to Xuanzang’s legacies and the Journey to the West story-cycle has been published as articles and book chapters. Many of these essays are available on my Academia page.
I am currently working on two edited collections. The first, for Shambhala, is an anthology of the biographies and teachings of prominent Chinese Buddhist teachers active in the first half of the twentieth century. The second (co-edited with James Benn and Ji Zhe) is a collection of essays devoted to the interior dimensions of Chinese religious life.
Funding:
My research has been generously supported by the Fulbright Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, and the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan.
Teaching interests:
At Michigan, I teach a range of courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. My regular course offerings include “Introduction the Buddhism,” “Zen Buddhism: History, Culture, and Critique,” “Gods, Ghosts, and Gangsters: Popular Religion in China,” “Buddhism and Death,” and “Zen Masters, Dharma Bums, and Drag Queens: Buddhism in America.” I also teach courses on the reinvention of religion in modern Asia, Qing dynasty and Republican era Buddhism in China, reading Buddhist texts (in Chinese), and systems of self-cultivation in China.
