The American Council of Learned Societies is pleased to announce The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation/ACLS Program in Buddhist Studies, a new initiative supporting research and teaching in Buddhist studies funded by a $1.9 million grant from the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation. Working with the Foundation, ACLS will offer an articulated set of fellowship and grant competitions that will expand the understanding and interpretation of Buddhist thought in scholarship and society, strengthen international networks of Buddhist studies, and increase the visibility of innovative currents in those studies. ACLS will organize competitions for Dissertation Fellowships, Postdoctoral Fellowships, Collaborative Research Grants, and Visiting Professorships.



These are global competitions. There are no restrictions as to the location of work proposed or the citizenship of applicants.

“We are honored to partner with the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation,” said ACLS President Pauline Yu. “The humanities study how people create and convey meaning; the study of religions is thus one of the core concerns of the humanities. This new initiative will help bring Buddhist studies to the center of academic inquiry worldwide.”

“We are committing substantial resources to strengthening the teaching and study of Buddhism in modern society, supporting outstanding scholars and institutions worldwide. This is an important step towards realizing my family’s vision of developing a Buddhist Learning Network to further the study of Buddhist philosophy and broaden its impact in the twenty-first century,” said Robert Y.C. Ho, chairman of the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation.

Established in Hong Kong in 2005 by Robert Hung Ngai Ho as a private philanthropic organization, the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation promotes understanding of Buddhism through Buddhist studies and Buddhist art. Its programs include the Buddhist Ministry Initiative at Harvard Divinity School; a center and an endowed professorship in Buddhist studies at Stanford University; a center for Buddhist art and conservation at The Courtauld Institute of Art; a gallery of Buddhist sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum; and various exhibitions of Buddhist art. 

The American Council of Learned Societies is a federation of 71 scholarly societies devoted to the promotion of the humanities and related social sciences. In 2013, ACLS will award more than $15 million in research fellowships.

The application deadline for the dissertation, postdoctoral, and collaborative competitions is November 5, 2013. The deadline for the visiting professorship competition is January 15, 2014.

More information on the new program may be found here.

Please send all inquiries to BuddhistStudies@acls.org.

Friends of Gate Way Garden are looking for volunteers to help them landscape the area surrounding the Little Tokyo train station!

Sakura Rescue Project (桜 レスキュープロジェクト) / Friends of Gate Way Garden

Background

Little Tokyo Train Station (Gold Line) is one of the main gateways to the community of Little Tokyo. Once upon a time it had a nice cherry tree (sakura) area and promenade. However, it fell into disrepair and neglect a few years ago. Thomas O Kelly has launched a community project to revive and further develop the area with the community group Friends of Gate Way Garden taking the lead. Koyasan Temple is the primary Little Tokyo community organization involved with the project at this time. They are just getting started and are looking for additional help.

Sakura Rescue Project is looking for volunteers and supporters to help with the following:

·      Watering the garden once a week

·      Providing design ideas for the garden

·      Donations of tree fertilizer

·      Donations of whitewash (this protects sakura from sunburn)

 
Please contact  Thomas O Kelly at 626-298-9190 if you would like to help. Also, please feel free to share news of the project with friends, colleagues, or groups that might be interested.

Monday
June 3, 2013

Save the Date ~ BROWN GIRL IN THE RING

A New Musical by Velina Hasu Houston and Nathan Wang

Date: Monday, June 3, 2013
Time: 7:00 PM ~
Cost: Free
Location: East West Players
120 Judge John Aiso Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Please RSVP by email to the producer, Ms. Giselle Gilbert <leartistegiselle@gmail.com>

Thursday
May 2, 2013

CJRC Japanese American Religion and Society Project

A lecture by Dr Lon Kurashige (USC) focusing on anti-Japanese racism in early twentieth century Los Angeles.

Location: East Asian Seminar Room (110C), Doheny Memorial Library, USC
Time: 12:30 PM to 2:00 PM
Please RSVP by email to Mieko Araki cjrc@dornsife.usc.edu

ABSTRACT

This talk examines anti-Japanese racism in early twentieth century Los Angeles to figure out who supported it and who opposed it. The focus is on California’s alien land law, the subject of the state’s most controversial ballot measure in the 1920 general election. Who voted for the anti-Japanese proposition in Los Angeles? Who voted against it? And what lessons do their votes have for understanding past and present anti-immigrant racism?


BIOGRAPHY

Lon Kurashige teaches at the University of Southern California, where he is associate professor in the departments of History and American Studies and Ethnicity.  He is author of Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival, 1934-1990, winner of the History book prize from the Association for Asian American Studies in 2004.  He has written essays for many scholarly publications, including the Journal of American History and Pacific Historical Review, and is co-editor of the book Major Problems in Asian American History (2003).  He is currently an ABE fellow with the Social Science Research Council and has received Fulbright and Rockefeller awards.  The content of this talk is part of an on-going book project that reinterprets the history of Asian immigration exclusion.

Please RSVP by email to Mieko Araki cjrc@dornsife.usc.edu

Thursday
April 25, 2013

CJRC Lecture Series

A lecture by Dr Hwansoo Kim (Duke University) focusing on Korea’s Jōdōshinshū: Lay Monk Villages in Colonial Korea (1910-1945)

Location: East Asian Seminar Room (110C), Doheny Memorial Library, USC
Time: 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Please RSVP by email to cjrc@dornsife.usc.edu

ABSTRACT

A newspaper editorial from 1930s colonial Korea characterized the isolated villages of married Buddhist monks spread across the northern border between Korea and China as “the mystery of the century”. These lay monk villages (K. jaega-seung burak or Jp. zaikeso) existed from the seventeenth century until the 1960s. The males in these villages shaved their heads and had wives and children, and they ranged in number from thousands to tens of thousands at their peak. These lay monks and their families comprised the descendents of the Jurchens, an ethnic group from northern China who migrated to Korea and later mixed with Koreans.

In this presentation, based on previous scholarship and on untapped primary sources, he would like to take up two questions. First, how did these villagers come to take on a monastic identity (or, at minimum, the appellation)? Second, how should we understand the history of these communities within the context of Korean Buddhism? While scholars conventionally understanding the origin of this monastic identity as coincidental and unauthentic, he argues that Korean monks fleeing or relocating as a result of Choson Korea’s anti-Buddhist policies perhaps contributed to the formation of a monastic identity of the males in these villages. Finally, he will address how the Neo-Confucian Choson dynasty, imperial Japan, and North Korean authorities politicized these communities for their own purposes. These lay monk communities were an unusual manifestation of Korean Buddhism and as such force us to consider what, and who, defines Korean Buddhism and monastic.

BIOGRAPHY
Hwansoo Kim, Duke University

Hwansoo Kim is an assistant professor at Duke University in the field of Korean Buddhism and culture with the departments of Religion and Asian & Middle Eastern Studies. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 2007, followed by a post-doctoral appointment with the Harvard Reischauer Institute. He then taught Japanese religions as an assistant professor at the University of Arizona. Kim’s most recent article is “A Buddhist Christmas: The Buddha’s Birthday Festival in Colonial Korea (1928–1945).” He is the author of Empire of the Dharma: Korean and Japanese Buddhism, 1877–1912 (Harvard Asia Press, 2012).

More details about him at http://religiondepartment.duke.edu/people?Gurl=/aas/Religion&Uil=hwansoo.kim&subpage=profile

Please RSVP by email to Mieko Araki cjrc@dornsife.usc.edu

Friday
April 26, 2013

A lecture by Rev. Kosho Niwano, who is a president-designate of Rissho Kosei-kai, focusing on her book “The Buddha in Everyone’s Heart:
Seeking the World of the Lotus Sutra” followed by discussion with Dr. Lori Meeks and Dr. Miriam Levering.

Location: The Friends of the USC Lecture Hall (Room 240), Doheny Memorial Library, USC
Time: 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM (Registration starts from 1:30 PM)
Please RSVP by email to cjrc@dornsife.usc.edu

Please join us to hear this young religious leader and author share her personal study of Budhism and witness of liberation from suffering through following the teachings of the Lotus Sutra.

In this inspiring collection of reminiscences, a young religious leader shares the fruits of her personal study of the teach- ings of her grandfather, the founder of the international lay Buddhist organization Rissho Kosei-kai, Rev. Nikkyo Niwano (1906–99). The author bears witness to his lifelong dedica- tion to the liberation from suffering of all people through the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, one of the most impor- tant Mahayana Buddhist scriptures, still relevant in these turbulent times. 


BOOK OVERVIEW:

In this inspiring collection of reminiscences, a young religious leader shares the fruits of her personal study of the teachings of her grandfather, the founder of the internationla lay Buddhist organization Rissho Kosei-kai, Rev. Nikkyo Niwano (1906-1999). The author bears witness to his lifelong dedication to the liberation from suffering of all people through the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, one of the most important Mahayana Buddhist scriptures, still relevant in these turbulent times.

AUTHOR

Kosho Niwano is president-designate of Rissho Kosei-kai, which now has some 1.5 million member households worldwide. She is the mother of four children.

Rissho Kosei-kai is a Buddhist organization originally founded in Japan in 1938. We started sharing the teachings of Buddhism in the United States 50 years ago and we now have dharma centers in many U.S. locations, and an online sangha for those who do not live close to one of our centers.

Please RSVP by email to cjrc@dornsife.usc.edu

Monday
April 22, 2013

The USC East Asian Studies Center would like to invite you to a reading, Q&A, and book signing with award-winning contemporary Japanese crime novelist Fuminori Nakamura.

Wednesday
April 24, 2013

A talk “Friendships before (and beyond) marriage: Contemporary Japanese  women’s intimate relationships” by LAURA DALES (University of Western Australia)

Location: DML G28 (Herklotz Room, Doheny Library)
Date: Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Time: 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM

ABSTRACT

The average age of first marriage in Japan has steadily increased over the last century, as has the likelihood of never marrying for both women and men. In conjunction with the decline in average length of marriage – a result of greater divorce and later marriage – these patterns suggest that Japanese people are spending more of their lives outside marriage.

Japanese feminists have advocated for a reconsideration of women’s unmarried (single, divorced, widowed) life as liberating, interesting and inevitable (Haruka 2001; Sakai, 2003; Ueno 2007, 2009). In the context of demographic shifts, friendships, romantic relationships outside marriage, and work relationships represent possible support structures in a period of economic uncertainty.

But what of the emotional benefits of extra-familial relationships? What do platonic or romantic relationships outside the family offer women, when marriage is no longer inevitable or enduring? Scholarship in other societies suggests that relationships outside the nuclear reproductive family may constitute a “set of counter-heteronormative relationship practices…in which sexual/love relationships are decentred, and friendship is prioritized” (Roseneil 2010: 79-80). Does this suggestion also hold in the Japanese context? What do unmarried Japanese women’s perceptions of friendship suggest about intimacy?

In this paper I use data from recent fieldwork to explore the affective and practical implications of intimate relationships outside the family for women. In particular, I explore the ways that extra-familial relationships of intimacy support or destabilize the reproductive family, and the meaning attributed to these relationships by Japanese women.

BIOGRAPHY

Laura Dales is Assistant Professor in the Discipline of Asian Studies at the University of Western Australia. Her research interests include women’s groups, sexuality, singlehood and gender in Japan, agency and feminist ethnography. Recent publications include the monograph Feminist Movements in Contemporary Japan (Routledge, 2009). Laura is currently working on an Australia Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher (DECRA) project examining intimacy beyond the family in contemporary Japan.

Thursday
May 2, 2013

CJRC Japanese American Religion and Society Project

A lecture by Dr Lon Kurashige (USC) focusing on anti-Japanese racism in early twentieth century Los Angeles.

Location: East Asian Seminar Room (110C), Doheny Memorial Library, USC
Time: 12:30 PM to 2:00 PM
Please RSVP by email to Mieko Araki cjrc@dornsife.usc.edu

ABSTRACT

This talk examines anti-Japanese racism in early twentieth century Los Angeles to figure out who supported it and who opposed it. The focus is on California’s alien land law, the subject of the state’s most controversial ballot measure in the 1920 general election. Who voted for the anti-Japanese proposition in Los Angeles? Who voted against it? And what lessons do their votes have for understanding past and present anti-immigrant racism?


BIOGRAPHY

Lon Kurashige teaches at the University of Southern California, where he is associate professor in the departments of History and American Studies and Ethnicity.  He is author of Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival, 1934-1990, winner of the History book prize from the Association for Asian American Studies in 2004.  He has written essays for many scholarly publications, including the Journal of American History and Pacific Historical Review, and is co-editor of the book Major Problems in Asian American History (2003).  He is currently an ABE fellow with the Social Science Research Council and has received Fulbright and Rockefeller awards.  The content of this talk is part of an on-going book project that reinterprets the history of Asian immigration exclusion.

Please RSVP by email to Mieko Araki cjrc@dornsife.usc.edu

Friday
April 26, 2013

A lecture by Rev. Kosho Niwano, who is a president-designate of Rissho Kosei-kai, focusing on her book “The Buddha in Everyone’s Heart:
Seeking the World of the Lotus Sutra” followed by discussion with Dr. Lori Meeks and Dr. Miriam Levering.

Location: The Friends of the USC Lecture Hall (Room 240), Doheny Memorial Library, USC
Time: 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM (Registration starts from 1:30 PM)
Please RSVP by email to cjrc@dornsife.usc.edu

Please join us to hear this young religious leader and author share her personal study of Budhism and witness of liberation from suffering through following the teachings of the Lotus Sutra.

In this inspiring collection of reminiscences, a young religious leader shares the fruits of her personal study of the teach- ings of her grandfather, the founder of the international lay Buddhist organization Rissho Kosei-kai, Rev. Nikkyo Niwano (1906–99). The author bears witness to his lifelong dedica- tion to the liberation from suffering of all people through the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, one of the most impor- tant Mahayana Buddhist scriptures, still relevant in these turbulent times. 


BOOK OVERVIEW:

In this inspiring collection of reminiscences, a young religious leader shares the fruits of her personal study of the teachings of her grandfather, the founder of the internationla lay Buddhist organization Rissho Kosei-kai, Rev. Nikkyo Niwano (1906-1999). The author bears witness to his lifelong dedication to the liberation from suffering of all people through the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, one of the most important Mahayana Buddhist scriptures, still relevant in these turbulent times.

AUTHOR

Kosho Niwano is president-designate of Rissho Kosei-kai, which now has some 1.5 million member households worldwide. She is the mother of four children.

Rissho Kosei-kai is a Buddhist organization originally founded in Japan in 1938. We started sharing the teachings of Buddhism in the United States 50 years ago and we now have dharma centers in many U.S. locations, and an online sangha for those who do not live close to one of our centers.

Please RSVP by email to cjrc@dornsife.usc.edu