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Alumni

Kurt Behrendt, PhD Kurt Behrendt received both his MA (1991) and PhD (1997) in Indian Art History from UCLA. His dissertation, “Architecture of Devotion: Image and Relic Shrines of Gandhara,” became the basis of his first book, The Buddhist Architecture of Gandhara (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004). Since that time he has co-edited the book, Gandhāran Buddhism: Archaeology, Art, Texts, with Pia Brancaccio (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2006) and published The Art of Gandhara in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2007) for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he is currently Assistant Curator. Dr. Behrendt’s current research focuses on Buddhist art and archaeology of the sixth through ninth centuries on the Indian subcontinent. Specifically, he is interested in early esoteric practices in Western Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Kashmir and Northwest Pakistan that later became popular under the Palas in North India and by extension in Western and Central Tibet by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

James Benn, PhD James A. Benn received his PhD from UCLA in 2001 and is now Associate Professor of Buddhism and East Asian Religions at McMaster University. He studies Buddhism and Daoism in medieval China. To date, he has focused on three major areas of research: bodily practice in Chinese Religions; the ways in which people create and transmit new religious practices and doctrines; and the religious dimensions of commodity culture. He has published on self-immolation, spontaneous human combustion, Buddhist apocryphal scriptures, and tea and alcohol in medieval China in journals such as History of Religions, T’oung Pao, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies and Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. He is the author of Burning for the Buddha: Self-immolation in Chinese Buddhism (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007) and is currently completing a second book, Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History.

Chiwah Chan, PhD Chiwah Chan completed his PhD in Buddhist Studies in 1993 with a dissertation on "The Formation of Orthodoxy in Sung Dynasty Buddhism: Chih-li and the T'ien-t'ai School." He has published widely on the Chinese Tiantai tradition. He has served as Librarian for the Chinese Collection at Yale University and as Adjunct Lecturer in Yale's Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. Prior to that, he spent four years as a cataloger with the international cooperative Chinese Rare Books Project, based in the East Asian Library at Princeton University. He is now the Chinese Librarian at the University of Pennsylvania, where he selects scholarly resources to support the University's Chinese Studies program, organizes and supervises the technical processing of these materials, and provides specialized China-related reference and instructional services for faculty and students.

Gail Chin, PhD Gail Chin received her PhD from UCLA in 1995, focusing her dissertation on paintings of the descent of the Buddha at the point of death (raigôzu). Presently, she is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. She specializes in Japanese painting of the Heian and Kamakura periods (11th-13th centuries) with particular interest in the arts of Pure Land Buddhism. Current interests include Japanese representations of the body with reference to the “Notes on Illness” (Yamai no sôshi) and images of the nine stages of the decay of the female body (kusôzu). She is also interested in Asian Canadian art and history and contemporary Japanese art. Selected Works Book Chapter "On Being Joyful about Dying: The Painting of The Descent of Amid and His Holy Multitude of Mount Koya," Jacqueline Stone and Mariko Walter Namba, eds., Death and Death Rituals in Japan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003. Articles "The Gender of Buddhist Truth: The Female Corpse in a Group of Japanese Paintings," Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Fall (1998): pp. 79-121. "The Mukaekô of Taimadera: Salvation Re-enacted," Cahiers d'Extrème Asie 8 (1995): pp. 325-334. Proceedings "Women in the Yamai no soshi, a Set of Twelfth Century Japanese Paintings," Proceedings from the "Across Time and Genre Conference," August 16-20, 2001. Catalogues The Asian Collection at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Victoria: Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1996.

William Chu, PhD William Chu completed his PhD in Buddhist Studies from UCLA in 2006. He also received his BA from UCLA, with a major in psychology. Combining his interest in these two fields, he is currently researching Buddhist meditation and psychology. He has two books that are near completion: “A Buddha-Shaped Hole: Spiritual Crises in a Doctrinally-Undermined Chinese Buddhism,” and “A Godless Alternative: Buddhist Cure for Belief and Disbelief.” He has also translated the bulk of the Madhyamagama and substantial parts of the Fayuan zhulin for the Numata Center translation of the Chinese Buddhist canon. Dr. Chu is currently teaching at University of the West, where he holds positions as Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies, Chair of Academic Senate, and Ph.D. Adviser. He also is Chair of the Buddhist Renaissance Foundation.

Shayne Clarke, PhD Shayne Clarke’s research interests focus on Indian Buddhist monasticism, with particular reference to Buddhist monastic law codes (vinaya) preserved in Sanskrit, Pāli, Tibetan, and Chinese. His dissertation (UCLA, 2006), "Family Matters in Indian Buddhist Monasticism," reconsiders the role of the family in monastic Buddhism: relationships between monks and nuns, their families, children, marriages, and celibacy. Dr. Clarke has published on monastic codes and practice in ancient India and Tibet, as well as Tokugawa Japan. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at McMaster University and working on a number of projects related to the ordination of women (nuns) according to Buddhist monastic law codes and various Sanskrit fragments from the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya. Recent publications include: “When and Where is a Monk No Longer a Monk? On Communion and Communities in Indian Buddhist Monastic Law Codes.” Indo-Iranian Journal (2009) 52/2-3, 115-141; “Locating Humour in Indian Buddhist Monastic Law Codes: A Comparative Approach.” Journal of Indian Philosophy (2009) 37/4, 311-330; “Monks Who Have Sex: Pārājika Penance in Indian Buddhist Monasticisms.” Journal of Indian Philosophy (2009) 37/1, 1-43.

Robert Decaroli, PhD Robert Decaroli received his PhD (1999) from UCLA in the Arts of South and Southeast Asia with a minor in Buddhist Studies. He is author of the book, Haunting the Buddha: Indian Popular Religions and the Formation of Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2004). Dr. Decaroli is currently Associate Professor at George Mason University in the Department of History and Art History, where he has worked since graduating in 1999. For the last six years he has also served as Director of the Art History program there.

Sherry Fowler, PhD Sherry Fowler received her Ph.D. in Japanese Buddhist Art History in 1995. She is Associate Professor of Japanese Art History at University of Kansas. Among her publications are Muroji: Rearranging Art and History at a Japanese Buddhist Temple (University of Hawai’i Press, 2005); “Locating Tomyoji and Its “Six” Kannon,” in Capturing the “Original”: Archives for Cultural Properties (Tokyo: National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, 2010); “Views of Japanese Temples and Shrines from Near and Far: Precinct Prints of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Artibus Asiae 68/2 (2008); and “Travels of the Daihoonji Six Kannon Sculptures” Ars Orientalis 36 (2006). She is currently writing a book on the images of the Six Kannon cult in Japan.

Ding-hwa Evelyn Hsieh, PhD Ding-hwa Hsieh finished her PhD in Buddhist Studies at UCLA in 1993 with a dissertation on "A Study of the Evolution of K'an-hua Ch'an in Sung China: Yuan-Wu K'o-Ch'in (1063-1135) and the Function of Kung-an in Ch'an Pedagogy and Praxis." She received postdoctoral fellowships at UC Berkeley and Harvard, and is now a tenured professor at Truman State University in the Missouri state system.

George Keyworth, PhD George Keyworth received his PhD in 2001 from UCLA with a focus in Chinese Buddhism. He lectured at the University of Colorado, Boulder, from 2001-2003 and was Assistant Professor there from 2003 until 2006. He subsequently left Boulder to conduct research in Japan, and now lectures in Chinese Religions at the University of Saskatchewan. He is currently working on the topic of Spells and Zen Buddhism (in China and Japan), especially the Spell of the White Canopy of the Buddha's Sinciput (Ch. Baisangai foding zhou, Jpn. Byakusangai bucchōju 白傘蓋佛頂呪, Skt. Sitātapatra-buddhôṣṇīṣa-dhāraṇī) from the Chinese Śūraṃgama-sūtra (Shoulengyan jing, T. 945). His book manuscript, Transmitting the Lamp of Learning in Zen Buddhism, is currently under review with Oxford University Press.

Jongmyung Kim, PhD Jongmyung Kim received his MA and PhD from UCLA, graduating in 1994 with focuses in both Buddhist studies and Korean studies. He has published extensively in both English and Korean on a range of issues in Korean Buddhism. He has three forthcoming works for 2011: Korean Kings’ Buddhist Views and Statecraft (in Korean), Esoteric Buddhist Tradition in East Asia, and Zen Texts as “Public” Documents. He serves as Editor-in-chief for the International Journal of Korean Historical Studies and Vice President of the Association of East Asian Buddhism and Culture. Before his academic career in Buddhist studies, Dr. Kim was a scientist in Dairy Technology and Microbiology and conducted research on genetic engineering in 1987 for the Cancer Institute in the School of Medicine at Seoul National University. He is now Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Korean Studies at the Academy of Korean Studies.

Minku Kim, PhD Minku Kim earned both his BA (2003) and MA (2005) at Seoul National University, where he first studied Archaeology and Art History and later focused on Buddhist Art. Focusing on the Buddhist material culture of China in the Art History Department at UCLA, he completed his dissertation, “The Genesis of Image Worship: Epigraphic Evidence for Early Buddhist Art in China,” in 2010. He has published articles in both English and Korean. He is currently teaching and working on a book project entitled, “Inscribing Numinous Images,” through an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow grant at Stanford University. Recent publications include: “Min Chi wa Yujŏm-sa Osipsam-bul ǔi sŏngnip 閔漬와 楡岾寺 五十三佛의 成立,” Pulgyo hakpo 佛敎學報 56 (2010): 551-588; and with Sin So-yŏn 申紹然, and Hyŏnjang pŏpsa 玄奘法師 (Sŏul: Minǔmsa 民音社) [Annotated translation of Sally H. Wriggins, The Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang (Boulder, Co.: Westview, 2004)].

Seunghak Koh, PhD Seunghak Koh is an HK Research Professor at Dongguk University. His research interests include the Chinese and Korean scholastic tradition, especially that of Huayan Buddhism; lay Buddhist figures such as Li Tongxuan; interaction between Buddhism and Chinese indigenous philosophy such as the Zhou Yi, Daoism, Yin-Yang and Five Phases theory. Seunghak is currently working on his dissertation, “Li Tongxuan's Thought and Place in the Huayan Tradition.” His most recent publications are: “Li Tongxuan’s (635-730) Thought and Place in the Huayan Tradition,”and “Li Tongxuan’s Utilization of Chinese Symbolism in the Explication of the Avataṃsaka–sūtra,” Asian Philosophy 20(2), 2010; and “Taesŭng kisillon esŏ kkaedarŭm kwa hunsŭp ŭi kwan’gye” (The Relation between Enlightenment and ‘Vāsanā’ [Permeation] in the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna), Pulgyohak yŏn’gu 4, 2002.

Junghee Lee, PhD Junghee Lee received her PhD in Buddhist art history from UCLA in 1984.  She is currently Professor in Art History at Portland State University, where she teaches on Asian art from the modern to the ancient period, as well as special topics such as Buddhist art and Modern Japanese Painting. Her specialty is the Buddhist sculpture of Korea and China. She was a research associate at Harvard University for ten years and has also worked as consulting curator of Korean art from 1994-1997 at Portland Art Museum, curating the permanent installation of a Korean art gallery and a special exhibition entitled “In Pursuit of the Tiger.” Junghee Lee has published scholarly articles in journals such as Artibus Asiae, Oriental Art, and Misulsa Hakpo, entries in Grove's Dictionary of Art, and the exhibition catalogs In Pursuit of the Tiger and Azealas and Golden Bells for the Portland Art Museum, and Overlapping Lines for the University of Ulsan Press.

Ming-Wood Liu, PhD Ming-Wood LIU received his PhD in Buddhist Studies under UCLA’s inaugural professor of Chinese Buddhism, Kenneth Ch’en. Liu is the author of Madhyamaka Thought in China (Sinica Leidensia, 30), and many research articles in Chinese Buddhism, including “Fan Chen's ‘Treatise on the Destructibility of the Spirit’ and its Buddhist Critics” (Philosophy East and West), “The Lotus Sûtra and Garland Sûtra According to the Tien-t'ai and Hua-yen Schools in Chinese Buddhism” (T’oung Pao), and “Madhyamika and Yogacara Interpretations of the Buddhist-nature Concept in Chinese Buddhism” (Philosophy East and West). He was a lecturer in Chinese Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong.

Richard McBride, PhD Rick McBride completed his PhD in Buddhist Studies in 2001 with a dissertation entitled, “The Domestication of Buddhism in Silla Korea: Buddhist Cults in Ancient Korean Society.” He subsequently held a Mellon Post-doctoral Fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis and a Fulbright grant. He currently teaches at Brigham Young University, Hawaii. His first book, Domesticating the Dharma: Buddhist Cults and the Hwaŏm Synthesis in Silla Korea, was published by the University of Hawaii Press in 2007.

Karen Muldoon-Hules, PhD

Mark Nathan, PhD Mark A. Nathan graduated in 2010 with a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the Department of Asian Languages & Cultures. He also attended the University of Chicago (M.A., History of Religions) and Rutgers University (B.A., History). He specializes in Korean Buddhism from the late nineteenth century to today. His dissertation, “Buddhist Propagation and Modernization: The Significance of P’ogyo in Twentieth-Century Korean Buddhism,” looks at the adoption of religious propagation as a strategy of Buddhist reform and the role it played in reshaping the Buddhist tradition of Korea over the last century. He recently published, “The Encounter of Buddhism and Law in Early Twentieth-Century Korea,” Journal of Law and Religion 25/1 (2009-10): 1-32. Mark is a former graduate student coordinator for the Center for Buddhist Studies, and he is currently a visiting assistant professor in the Asian Studies Program at the University at Buffalo, SUNY.

Pori Park , PhD After completing her PhD at UCLA in 1998, Pori Park received a two-year Andrew W. Mellon teaching and research fellowship at Carleton College. Her research has focused on the intersection between Buddhism, colonialism, modernity, nationalism, and globalization. Examining the transformation of Buddhism in modernity, Buddhism and politics, and Buddhism’s involvement in social life, her scholarship explores the interplay between religion and politics in modern Korea. Her book, Trial and Error in Modernist Reforms: Korean Buddhism under Colonial Rule, was published in 2009, and she is working on a second book, Korean Buddhism Post-Liberation: De-colonization, Politics, and Modernization. Dr. Park is currently Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University.

Mario Poceski, PhD Mario Poceski received both his MA (1995, Chinese Language and Culture) and PhD (2000, Buddhist Studies) at UCLA. His main research areas include Chinese Buddhist history, literature, and philosophy, with a focus on the Tang period (618–907). He also has research and teaching interests in medieval Chinese history, Chan/Zen Buddhism, Korean and Japanese Buddhism, monastic culture and institutions, religious pluralism, and globalization of Buddhism. He has published extensively, including four books: Introducing Chinese Religions (2009), Ordinary Mind as the Way: The Hongzhou School and the Growth of Chan Buddhism (2007), Manifestation of the Tathāgata: Buddhahood According to the Avatamsaka Sūtra (1993), and Sun-Face Buddha: The Teachings of Ma-tsu and the Hung-chou School of Ch’an (1993, 2000) (the latter two of which are published under the name, Cheng Chien Bhikshu). Dr. Poceski is currently Associate Professor in the Religion Department of University of Florida.

David Riggs, PhD Before beginning Buddhist Studies, David Riggs worked as a systems analyst on NASA satellites at Goddard Space Flight Center and ran large computer centers for NASA, the US Air Force, and the Iranian government. He had his first taste of Buddhist Studies while taking a class on Ibn 'Arabi and Zen at the Imperial Academy of Iranian Philosophy. After leaving Iran, he spent a year in Japan, including a practice period at Hōsshinji, a Sōtō Zen monastic training temple. After fifteen years in the computer business, he switched lives and entered the University of Michigan’s graduate program in Buddhist Studies, where he received his MA. He finished his PhD at UCLA in 2002 with a dissertation on "The Rekindling of a Tradition: Menzan Zuihō and the Reform of Japanese Sōtō Zen in the Tokugawa Era." He has taught at the University of Illinois, UC Santa Barbara, Oberlin College, and most recently at the University of Hawai'i. His articles on Zen practice and ritual and the life of Menzan have appeared in several scholarly journals and in the Oxford University Press Zen Buddhism series. His current research concerns Zen ordinations in Japan and America.

Diane Riggs, PhD Diane Riggs completed her PhD at UCLA in 2010. Her dissertation, “The Cultural and Religious Significance of Japanese Buddhist Vestments,” was based on five years of research in Kyoto at Ryūkoku University (2002–2007) and at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Kokusai Nihon bunka kenkyū senta) (2002–2003). This research has also lead her to four publications on the subject, the latest entitled, "Materials appropriate for Buddhist robes: Two Edo period interpreters of the Rag robe (funzōe) and Daoxuan's prohibition of silk robes,” in Indogaku Bukkyō gaku kenkyū (2007). She has lectured at UCLA, Kenyon College, and Oberlin College, where she now teaches as Visiting Assistant Professor.

Heng Yi Shr, PhD

Jacqueline Stone, PhD Jacqueline Stone is a professor in the Department of Religion at Princeton University, where she teaches Buddhism and Japanese Religions. She received her PhD in Buddhist Studies from UCLA in 1990. Her chief research field is Japanese Buddhism of the medieval and modern periods. Her current research areas include death and dying in Buddhist cultures, Buddhism and national identity, and traditions of the Lotus Sutra, particularly Tendai and Nichiren. She is the author of Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism, which received a 2001 American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion. She has co-edited The Buddhist Dead: Practices, Discourses, Representations (with Bryan J. Cuevas, 2007), Readings of the Lotus Sutra (with Stephen F. Teiser, 2009), and other volumes of collected essays. She has served as president of the Society for the Study of Japanese Religions and co-chair of the Buddhism section of the American Academy of Religion. She currently serves on the editorial board of the Kuroda Institute for the Study of Buddhism and the advisory boards of Buddhist Literature and the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies.

Sherin Wing, PhD Sherin Wing received her PhD in Buddhist Studies 2010 with a dissertation entitled, “Re-gendering Buddhism: Postcolonialism, Gender, and the Princess Miaoshan Legend.” Her writing and research center on Chinese postcolonialism, religion and gender as well as contemporary Chinese urbanism and architecture. Her academic work has been published in JFSR and JIWS and her current book project with Routledge concerns architecture and cultural criticism. She is also a regular contributor to the Archdaily.com and the Huffington Post and is a successful stock trader.

Mimi Yiengpruksawan, PhD Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan has taught at Yale University for two decades with a concentration on traditional Buddhist art and culture; she received her PhD in Buddhist art history in 1988. Since 2006 she has maintained a strong scholarly interest in cross-cultural Buddhist exchange linking the Silk Road and Himalayan regions to the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese regions of North Asia. As director of the Yale Silk Road Project she has conducted annual site seminars at Buddhist centers in Xinjiang, Gansu, and Sichuan provinces in China; and in central Tibet, with a seminar planned for 2012 that will travel from Lhasa to Ngari for an extended visit to sites relating to the Guge kingdom and then to Dunhuang via Khotan. Mimi is currently completing a book, Michinaga’s Peacocks: Heian Japan in Global Perspective, in which she explores cultural flows linking Buddhist Kyoto to the Tibetan, Tangut, and Khitan regions.

Harumi Ziegler, PhD Harumi Ziegler received her MA and PhD in Chinese Buddhist studies at UCLA, with a 2001 dissertation entitled “The Sinification of Buddhism as Found in an Early Chinese Indigenous Sutra: A Study and Translation of the Fo-shuo Ching-tu San-mei Ching (The Samadhi-Sutra on Liberation through Purification Spoken by the Buddha).” Though now retired from the Rare Books division of the UCLA Young Research Library, Dr. Ziegler is currently working on an English translation of the Hongmingji and the Fayuan zhulin (fascicles 21–40) for the Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research.