Buddhist Futures: Conceptions of Modernity and Temporality in Modern Japanese Buddhism

  • Friday, November 09, 2012
  • 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
  • Doheny Memorial Library, USC

Friday, November 9, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm

University Park Campus 
Doheny Memorial Library (DML) 
Herklotz Room (G24), Music Library             

The modernization of Japan in the late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries brought large transformations in the realm of religion, and arguably carried within itself religious dimensions. This conference will discuss questions concerning the relations between modernity and Buddhism in Japan, and explore not only how Buddhism adapted to modernity, but also how Buddhist thinkers envisioned modernity and the future, and actively tried to shape it. How did Buddhist thinkers reconcile modern ideas of progress and linear time with Buddhist circular conceptions of time, nationalism and universalism, reality and utopia, faith and science and technology? Faculty and graduate students from Japan, the United States, and Europe will come to the University of Southern California, bringing together perspectives from religious studies, Buddhist studies, intellectual history, and history of science and technology.

Free admission

Participating Scholars

James Ketelaar, University of Chicago

Jacqueline Stone, Princeton University

Otani Eiichi, Bukkyo University

Kato Hitoshi, Osaka University

Yulia Burenina, Osaka University

Victoria Pinto, University of Southern California

Clinton Godart, University of Southern California

For more information contact kanay@dornsife.usc.edu

Co-Sponsored by the USC East Asian Studies Center and the USC History Department