Topics in Buddhism (319-0-20)
Topic
Encountering Buddhism through Women Writers
Instructors
Darcie Marilyn Price-Wallace
Meeting Info
Kresge Centennial Hall 2-331: Tues, Thurs 2:00PM - 3:20PM
Overview of class
The course broadens the ways of understanding of Buddhism by bringing attention to the much-neglected voices of women. Drawing from women's writings within and outside the Buddhist canon, film, and art on Buddhist women by women, this course emphasizes women's experiences on the Buddhist path as they navigate suffering and its alleviation across cultures over 2600 years. This course is reading intensive, incorporating three novels in addition to poetry, film, and art. The first novel retells the life of the Buddha and his awakening through his wife's perspective; the second describes Japanese teen's reliance on a Zen nun as she navigates trauma, grief, selfhood, and time; the third explores a Tibetan family's generational displacement in the face of colonialism, violence, the movement of the Tibetan diaspora, and cultural appropriation. In addition, this course engages with canonical material such as the collection of poems by the earliest nuns who recount their path to awakening in the Pali tradition, explores the first Chinese nuns' biographies and Zen nuns writing on non-duality and emptiness, and considers biographies of female Tibetan religious professionals on their pursuit for liberation alongside contemporary Tibetan poets' perspectives on Buddhist thought and the immigrant experience. The class includes exploring Buddhist ideas together with their exposition in literature, film, and art while accounting for canonical doctrinal paradoxes such as: inclusion/exclusion, unity/diversity, ultimate/relative, self/selflessness.
Learning Objectives
1) Identify key features of Buddhism and its different iterations through women's perspectives.
2) Interpret the nuanced presentations of gender and sexuality as presented in Buddhism.
3) Describe points of similarity and difference in Buddhism as it relates to history, culture, and contemporary life.
4) Integrate theories of the study of religion and narrative studies to think about the foundations and transformations of Buddhism in time and space through women's perspectives.
Class Materials (Required)
Vanessa R. Sasson, Yasodhara and the Buddha
Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being
Tsering Yangzom Lama, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies
Class Attributes
Ethical and Evaluative Thinking Foundational Disci
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area
Ethics & Values Distro Area