Description: This course engages students with accounts by Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Buddhist pilgrims and translators by focusing on the idea of “travel” in their imagination of the Indian roots, and of the global routes, that Buddhism has taken throughout Asia, and by exploring the central role that these pilgrims and translators have played in the creation of religious worlds that both imply and exceed cultures and nations. Reading materials include primary texts in translation and essays on the anthropology of travel, the globalization of religion, and transnational movements.
Student level: Upper-Intermediate;
Related Fields: Asian Studies, Religious Studies, Anthropology; Course format: Weekly lectures;
Requirements: Mid-term paper; Final research paper.