I’ll be visiting the University of Michigan’s Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies.

I’ll be visiting UNC Charlotte to deliver the Loy H. Witherspoon Lecture.

Drawing on lessons from a popular Penn course called “The Religion of Anime,” the first part of this lecture provides a brief overview of relationships between manga, anime, and older Japanese illustrated media such as Buddhist picture scrolls. The second part offers two hands-on lessons that teachers can reproduce in their own classrooms with minimal preparation.

I’ll visit the College of Charleston to talk about work in progress.

東大宗教学研究室で講義をすることになりました。

I’ll visit Cornell University to share material from my forthcoming book, Difficult Subjects.

I’ll participate with Professor Silvia Rivadossi in a Zoom forum organized by GESSHIN, a student organization at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. Zoom link here when I have it.

I’ll visit Amherst College to discuss material from my forthcoming book Difficult Subjects.

I will virtually visit SOAS to deliver a lecture on 10/6 that covers the main points of Faking Liberties and introduces some of the findings of my new book Difficult Subjects. Registration here.

I’ll be speaking at the University of Michigan about my book in progress.

I’ll be visiting Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia to talk about chapter 7 of Difficult Subjects.

I’ll be visiting the University of Chester to talk about current research.

A talk at Yale University.

In this lecture I use Buddhist debates over public schooling to show that differences of opinion over the proper relationship between Buddhism and the state have elicited vehement disagreements about orthodoxy and proper Buddhist practice.

When Americans occupied Japan at the end of WWII, they claimed that Japanese religion was a political problem and declared religious freedom a solution. But in doing so, the occupiers ignored a long history of debate about religious freedom in Japan. Their narrative also masked competing interpretations among Americans themselves about was religion was and how it could be freed. This talk traces the lasting consequences of those debates, both for Japan and the world.

Drawing on publications from the Japan Teachers’ Union, the Ministry of Education, and various political pressure organizations, this talk shows that the Occupation-era concept of the “spiritual vacuum” continued to shape debates over religious education, morality, and patriotism long after the occupiers left.

How have American audiences understood Japanese religions? How did Japanese Buddhism transform from a type of un-American emperor worship practiced by unassimilable Japanese Americans to an artistic inspiration for Beat Generation authors? How did the word “Zen” become a long-running Daily Show comedic bit, an adjective for marketing merchandise, and a legitimate Scrabble play? Why did a popular Netflix show get American audiences suddenly talking positively about the “Shintō roots” of tidy closets in January 2019, and what historical factors allowed this usage to differ so much from WWII-era descriptions of Shintō as a religion of war? Examining newspaper articles, magazine spreads, martial arts films, television programs, and anime, this talk explores how Japanese and American people have collaboratively constructed images of Japanese contemplative and therapeutic practices that reinforce, challenge, and transcend the commonsense category of religion. 

A double header with Justin B. Stein (Bukkyō University) on religion in the Pacific. Japan, Hawai`i, oh my!

A widespread historical narrative suggests that Buddhists failed to defend religious freedom in prewar and wartime Japan. But religious freedom was not a universal principle that Buddhists failed to understand or protect. Rather, Japan’s 1889 constitutional guarantee of religious freedom enrolled Buddhists in the project of defining “real religion” in order to free it.

A Social Science Research Council/Japan Foundation Abe Fellow Talk at I-House