Agencies of Modern Buddhist Women: Korea and Southeast Asia

Women in Buddhism Virtual Zoom Workshop

Date: February 9, 2024

Time: 9:30am - 12:00pm Hawaii Time

This online workshop will explore the agencies of modern Buddhist women through teaching-oriented presentations on Korea and Southeast Asia. The program is free and open to undergraduate educators and will include two presentations, followed by a roundtable discussion of the challenges of teaching about women’s agency across historical and cultural differences, as well as strategies for creatively meeting those challenges.

This workshop is part two of a two-part series of online workshops that builds on the Asian Studies Development Program's 2023 Summer Institute on Women in Buddhism: Religion, Politics, and the Arts. Generously supported with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the 2023 Institute was a 4-week in-person program that conducted a multidisciplinary exploration of the complexity of women’s agency in Buddhist Asia, and its variations across both time and cultures.

Agenda

Speakers

Jin Y. Park is Professor and Department Chair of Philosophy and Religion at American University. Dr. Park’s research explores Korean and East Asian Buddhism, intercultural philosophy, modern Korean social and political philosophy, and intercultural ethics, focusing on the intersections of gender, violence, politics of discrimination, and narrative identity. Marginality has been a consistent theme in Dr. Park’s scholarship which deals with the marginalization of non-West and non-Western philosophy, of women’s philosophy, and of some forms of philosophizing, revealing the power structure in philosophy and aiming for the voices of the margin to be heard. Dr. Park is the author, editor or translator of a number of books including Buddhism and Postmodernity and Women and Buddhist Philosophy. She currently serves as President of the American Academy of Religion and President of the North American Korean Philosophy Association. She also served as President of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy.

Lisa Battaglia is a comparative religionist with scholarly interest in Asian religions, and especially contemporary Buddhist movements in Southeast Asia. Her research has focused on women’s ordination in Theravada Buddhism, women’s alternative renunciant communities in Buddhist Thailand, and, most recently, representations of beauty and the female body in Buddhism. Dr. Battaglia’s research interests lie at the intersection of Asian religious traditions and critical methods in the study of religion. Her research aims to develop a dialogical model for exploring western feminist critique and indigenous Buddhist subjectivities. A key concern of her scholarship is how gender, sexuality, human rights, and religious vocation translate across cultures and cultural domains. Her fieldwork and research have taken her throughout Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Malaysia. Dr. Battaglia received her B.A. from Duke University, an M.A. from the University of Alabama, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University.

The views expressed are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect East-West Center policies or positions.