VOLUME 1 NUMBER 4 SUMMER 2004 PAGE 2

Sacred geographies Workshop explores Asian religious landscape The ARC workshop on sacred geographies wound up its year-long program during spring term with meetings that spanned the Asian continent. The group heard talks on Indian religious sites (Phyllis Granoff, McMaster), a magical Chinese monastery (Koichi Shinohara, McMaster), contemporary Chinese mountain hermits (William Porter, author), and a fundraising tour by a Japanese icon (Nam-lin Hur, UBC). The workshop, entitled "Sacred Geographies: Space, Place, and Network in Asian Religions and Cultures," is sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center and the Mellon Foundation, and organized for ARC by the Stanford Center for Buddhist Studies. It will continue next year, under the direction of Buddhist studies professor Michael Zimmermann and doctoral student Kenneth Koo.

Stanford Center for Buddhist Studies Conference focuses on Buddhism in Burma Religion in contemporary Myanmar was the focus of a two-day conference held at Stanford May 22 and 23. The event, entitled "Burmese Buddhism and the Spirit Cult Revisited," brought to campus scholars from England, France, Japan, Singapore, and the U.S. Organized by Stanford Center for Buddhist Studies research fellow Naoko Kumada, the conference was funded by the Toyota Foundation and co-sponsored by ARC, SCBS, and the Southeast Asia Forum. Society of Fellows in Japanese Studies Japanese Buddhism and medicine On May 7, the Stanford Society of Fellows in Japanese Studies held a one-day workshop on "Buddhism and the Medicinal Arts in Japanese History." Workshop web page The event was organized by Society fellow Lori Meeks (USC) and co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for Buddhist Studies. The workshop heard papers by Raoul Birnbaum (UC Santa Cruz), Michael Como (William and Mary), Andrew Goble (Oregon), and Duncan Williams (UC Irvine), with responses by Ann Jannetta (Pittsburgh), and Yi-li Wu (Albion).

Scholars debate role of politics in Chinese religions chinese religion from p. 1 The conference included papers by Timothy Brook (Toronto), Adam Chao (Skidmore), Kenneth Dean (McGill), Dru Gladney (Hawaii), Eriberto Lozada (Davidson), Richard Madsen (UCSD), David Palmer (London School of Economics), Ning Qiang (Michigan), and Carsten Vala (UC Berkeley). Topics ranged from the regulation of religion in the late imperial period, through Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Daoism, to popular religion and Qigong. The event was made possible by a research grant from the China and Inner Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies.

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