The New Books Network
Online here
A network of podcast channels containing interviews with authors of newly published monographs in a variety of academic disciplines.
Featured Series
Featured Publications:
The Buddhist convent known as Hokkeji, founded in the eighth century in the old capitol of Nara, fell into decline and was all but forgotten for centuries before reemerging in the Kamakura period (1185-1333) as an important pilgrimage site and as the location of a reestablished monastic order for women.
Twentieth-century Americans imagined “the East” through a particular perception of what Eastern “spirituality” was and how one could access it: namely through the figure of the “Oriental Monk” which they encountered frequently in the movies and TV shows of that period.
To understand Buddhism, one must understand the tension between the knowledge of impermanence and the love of the Dharma. This sense of loss has defined Buddhism from the Buddha’s Parinirvana through to the present day.
On how Buddhist narratives of pregnancy deconstruct the traditional feminine and open a space for female renunciation.
Chuchok fits into this genre of “Thai trickster figures.” When you think about the story not from the perspective of Vessantara but from the perspective of the peasantry, think about how amazing it is that a peasant would even think to ask a member of the royal family for their two children to be his wife’s servants! It’s absurd!
What is the “otherwise” of modernism in Mongolia and Inner-Asia?
The temples were a signal that the previous people who came to Delphi had gotten the truth.
I had this sureal sense of vertigo where I felt like I was constantly teetering over the edge of something that I didn’t understand. The entire town was built on top of bombs.
There’s a huge amount of it that’s positive! I’m not so surprised that there are negative attitudes towards women depicted in early Buddhist literature, because this is an ancient civilization with traditional values. So, the negativity doesn’t surprise me. But all the positivity does.
An excellent walk-through of the classical Indian philosophies of language: from the Sanskrit grammars of Panini and Patanjali, to Brahmanical realism, Buddhist skepticism, and Jain agnosticism.
… in the past two decades, as the Chinese economy has grown by leaps and bounds, the People’s Republic of China has begun to play an increasingly assertive role in mainland and maritime Southeast Asia
How deeply understanding the dependent origination of the chicken nugget helps us understand the entire modern world and how it got the way it is.
How did the Geluk school come to dominate Tibetan Buddhism?
Khunu Lama (1895–1977) was a master scholar and strict renunciant who was also a teacher to many of the twentieth century’s most famous masters, including His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. In this interview about his life, Annabelle Pitkin reflects on the tension between solitude and connection in the lives of Tibetan, Buddhist monastics.
I would frequently see adults recount something a child had said that was particularly provocative or deep by describing it as “adorable.” “How cute they are.” Even well-meaning adults just kind of dismiss children’s larger questions and ideas.
The 500-year history of world maps in Buddhist Japan and what these maps tell us about the Japanese, Buddhist identity.
How Abel-Rémusat’s “poaching” of Asian scholarship facilitated the creation of Western “Buddhist Studies” as a discipline and how his Relation des Royaumes Bouddhiques was in turn coopted by Himalayan Buddhists fighting in the collapse of the Qing says a lot about the production of academic knowledge.
The story of how an environmental NGO became complicit in illegal logging in Cambodia.
How do we understand the evolution of a prominent figure or any kind of deity like this over long stretches of time, especially when they have many, many iterations?