This dissertation is a study of the contributions that women made to the early development of Chinese Buddhism during the Northern Wei Dynasty 北魏 (386–534 CE). Working with the premise that Buddhism was patronized as a necessary, secondary arm of government during the Northern Wei, the argument put forth in this dissertation is that women were uniquely situated to play central roles in the development, expansion, and policing of this particular form of state-sponsored Buddhism due to their already high status as a religious elite in Northern Wei society. Furthermore, in acting as representatives and arbiters of this state-sponsored Buddhism, women of the Northern Wei not only significantly contributed to the spread of Buddhism throughout East Asia, but also, in so doing, they themselves gained increased social mobility and enhanced social status through their affiliation with the new, foreign, and wildly popular Buddhist tradition. Throughout the dissertation, stories of empresses, concubines, female bureaucrats, lay devotees, and female members of the Buddhist monastic institution will be studied in order to show the unique connections between women and the Buddhist tradition under the Northern Wei and also to reveal the diversity of roles that they played in the administration of a court-sponsored, imperial Buddhist tradition. In bringing these stories to light, this dissertation will utilize biographical material from the dynastic history of the Northern Wei as well as from a number of previously unstudied epigraphs. Additionally, other forms of inscriptional, religious, and secular materials will be widely consulted in this exploration of the lives of Buddhist women at a time when Buddhism was becoming a state religion in a powerful and ambitious dynasty – the Northern Wei. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

In the patriarchal milieu of sixteenth-century China, women demonstrated agency in their families and communities through their religious practices. Male family members typically performed Confucian rites related to ancestor veneration; yet there were many opportunities for women to participate in practices associated with other religious traditions. In this study, I will elucidate the religious roles of women during the late Ming dynasty (1368—1644 CE). Using the cultural-historical method, I will demonstrate the ways in which women gained agency and freedom from social conventions through their religious practices. By comparing literary sources with historical documents, I will validate the use of my major literary source, Jin ping mei, to study the religious practices in sixteenth-century China. This study will provide scholars with a nuanced understanding of gender roles within upper-class families in early modern China. Women were not simply passive, submissive members of a Confucian society; rather, they often gained authority and autonomy within their families and communities. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

The term “ghost marriage” is a loose translation for a Chinese phrase which literally means “netherworld marriage” (冥婚,minghun). It is the marriage which involves at lease one deceased. It has many similarities to an ordinary marriage and yet is fundamentally different. In this thesis, an inscription from an ancient Chinese tomb is transcribed and translated, followed by a discussion on several key terms in the text. Through the examination of the inscription, the vision of the afterlife in ancient China is found to be both a continuation and a separation from this world.

abstract: This dissertation analyzes the way in which leaders of certain Taiwanese Buddhist organizations associated with a strand of Buddhist modernism called "humanistic Buddhism" use discourse and rhetoric to make environmentalism meaningful to their members. It begins with an assessment of the field of religion and ecology, situating it in the context of secular environmental ethics. It identifies rhetoric and discourse as important but under acknowledged elements in literature on environmental ethics, both religious and secular, and relates this lack of attention to rhetoric to the presence of a problematic gap between environmental ethics theory and environmentalist practice. This dissertation develops a methodology of rhetorical analysis that seeks to assess how rhetoric contributes to alleviating this gap in religious environmentalism. In particular, this dissertation analyzes the development of environmentalism as a major element of humanistic Buddhist groups in Taiwan and seeks to show that a rhetorical analysis helps demonstrate how these organizations have sought to make environmentalism a meaningful subject of contemporary Buddhist religiosity. This dissertation will present an extended analysis of the concept of "spiritual environmentalism," a term developed and promoted by the late Ven. Shengyan (1930-2009), founder of the Taiwanese Buddhist organization Dharma Drum Mountain. Furthermore, this dissertation suggests that the rhetorical methodology proposed herein offers offers a direction for scholars to more effectively engage with religion and ecology in ways that address both descriptive/analytic approaches and constructive engagements with various forms of religious environmentalism. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Religious Studies 2012

This paper takes a fresh look at the global spread of the Chinese–Taiwanese new religious movement Yiguandao (一貫道; the emic transcription is “I-Kuan Tao”) by directing attention to the concrete places where transnational connections and interactions actually transpire, i.e., temples, shrines, and other sites of worship. Emically known as “Buddha halls” (fotang 佛堂), these places range from large-scale temple complexes, to small niches of worship in people’s private residences. Yet, they all share the potential of becoming venues of transregional interactions through processes of migration, the circulation of personnel, and local outreach. I argued that we need to take the distinct character of these localities more seriously, in order to fully understand the global networks of Yiguandao groups. Through their specific embeddedness in both local affairs and transnational projects, these temples are not simply local chapters of the (mostly) Taiwanese headquarters, but instead they are “translocalities” or even “portals of globalization”—two concepts developed in migration and global studies to help understand the significance of place in the recent phase of so-called globalization. By exploring Yiguandao temples across the globe, this paper critically evaluated these approaches, and their usefulness for the study of global religions. Empirically, it drew on both print and online material, as well as ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the author in Taiwan, Vienna (Austria), California, South Africa, and Japan from 2016 to 2018.