North American Religions Unit Roundtable: Reimagining the Midcentury
Nov
24
9:00 AM09:00

North American Religions Unit Roundtable: Reimagining the Midcentury

This roundtable discussion re-examines religion in the mid-twentieth century United States. Histories of this time period have traditionally emphasized a religious boom post-World War II, Cold War anxieties, suburbanization, and “tri-faith” consensus. Our conversation will begin the process of destabilizing these familiar historiographies.

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AAS Roundtable: Denaturalizing Culturalism and Essentialism in the Research and Teaching of Japan
Mar
16
8:30 AM08:30

AAS Roundtable: Denaturalizing Culturalism and Essentialism in the Research and Teaching of Japan

This interdisciplinary roundtable focusing on Japan explores how essentialist or culturalist arguments are mobilized in research and teaching contexts by interlocutors, other academics, and students, and how to respond as scholars and instructors.

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Teaching Manga, Anime, and Traditional Japanese Culture
Jan
31
4:30 PM16:30

Teaching Manga, Anime, and Traditional Japanese Culture

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.

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Author-Meets-Critics Roundtable: Justin B. Stein, Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific
Nov
19
9:00 AM09:00

Author-Meets-Critics Roundtable: Justin B. Stein, Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific

I have organized an exciting roundtable at the 2023 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion that will be co-sponsored by the Japanese Religions Unit; The Asian North American Religion, Culture, and Society Unit; the New Religious Movements Unit; and the Esotericism Unit.

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Japanese Journal of Religious Studies Book Review Symposium
Dec
1
8:00 PM20:00

Japanese Journal of Religious Studies Book Review Symposium

  • Nanzan University Institute for Religion and Culture (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

I’ll be participating in a book review discussion with Mark R. Mullins (University of Auckland) on his Yasukuni Fundamentalism: Japanese Religions and the Politics of Restoration (University of Hawai`i Press, 2021) and my own Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2019).

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