Wednesday, February 23, 2022 - 3:30pm Via Zoom: Pre-register at https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cUYNfA1mTYWYO1JhMbFSHA. Guest speaker Dr. Ann Gleig will be delivering this year's Howard Lecture on Feb 23, 2022 at 3:30 via Zoom. Pre-registration is required. Please register at https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cUYNfA1mTYWYO1JhMbFSHA. Undoing Whiteness in American Buddhist Modernism: Critical, Contextual and Collective Turns What is “whiteness” and how has it shaped, functioned and hindered American convert Buddhist modernism? Drawing on ethnography and textual analysis, this paper considers initiatives by Buddhists of Color, and their white allies, to expose and disrupt whiteness in American Buddhism including a detailed examination of the pioneering work of Zenju Earthlyn Manuel from the Soto Zen lineage and Larry Yang from the Insight Community to forge alternative Buddhist hermeneutics of embodied difference and multiculturalism. In conclusion, it situates racial justice work as reflecting critical, collective, and contextual turns in North American Buddhism that signify a wider shift from Buddhist modernism to Buddhism in a postmodern and postcolonial climate. Ann Gleig is an Associate Professor of Religion and Cultural Studies at the University of Central Florida. She is the author of American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity (Yale University Press, 2019). She is currently working on a book with Amy Langenberg on sexual abuse in American Buddhism (under contract with Yale University Press), co-editing The Oxford Handbook on American Buddhism with Scott Mitchell, and is a research associate on the “Transforming the American Sangha: Race, Racism and Diversity in North American Insight Meditation” project led by Nalika Gajaweera. Presented by the Department of Religion
