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Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

 
Venue: 
Rooms 8 & 9, Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies
Event date: 
Tuesday, 16 May, 2023 - 14:00
Event organiser: 

Launched in September, 2121, the Yin-Cheng Distinguished Lecture Series (印證佛學傑出學術系列講座) is a collaborative, multi-university partnership between Peking University, Columbia University, Princeton University, Harvard University, University of British Columbia, University of Oxford and University of Cambridge.

The Lecture Series is established in honour of Venerable Cheng-yen 證嚴, founder of Tzu Chi, and her mentor Yinshun 印順 (1906–2005), with the goal of promoting topics in Buddhist studies. The series is organised at Cambridge by Dr Noga Ganany with the generous support of the Tzu Chi Foundation.

This lecture in the series is given by Prof. Elena Valussi, Loyola University. With discussant Dr Noga Ganany, University of Cambridge.

In investigating the religious traditions of Sichuan (and beyond), the diversity and hybridity of religious practices expressed in texts and rituals have emerged. This talk will address parallel questions of hybridity and religious identity through the historical analysis of two religious spaces. The first is the Chunyang guan 純陽觀 in Xinjin 新津. First imagined and built in the late Qing dynasty as a space devoted to the three religions, in fact it functioned as a fully religious space only for a short time. In the early to mid-twentieth century it was variously used as an orphanage and school, and is now a museum and tea house, while still holding a liminal religious significance. The second example comes from a preliminary investigation of several different guildhalls (huiguan 會館) in Sichuan.  Originally multivalent spaces representing the business interests and religious beliefs of migrant communities entering Sichuan in the mid Qing dynasty, after losing their supporting communities and undergoing various historical vicissitudes, many are now in disrepair, shifting from religious to secular spaces, or being re-assigned to a different religious tradition, often Buddhist. The case of the Yuwang gong 禹王宮 in Lizhuang 李莊, now the Huiguang si 慧光寺 Buddhist monastery, is emblematic. Because of their shifting and fragile identities, their movement from sacralized to secularized or viceversa, the spaces under investigation are undercategorized, thus overlooked, understudied and marginalized. These examples might help in the historical investigation of other shifting religious sites in different parts of China.

在調研四川及其周邊地區宗教傳統的過程中,文本與儀式中的宗教實踐呈現出多樣性與混雜性的特徵。本次講座通過對兩個宗教空間的史料分析,探討混雜性與宗教属性的平行问题。第一個案例是新津的純陽觀。此觀建於晚清,最初被想像為一個尊崇三教的空間,但事實上它只在短時間內完全發揮宗教空間的功能。自二十世紀起,它成為一個多功能的場所,二十世紀初期至中期曾被用作孤兒院兼學校,現在是一個博物館兼茶館,儘管仍具備有限的宗教意義。第二個例子來自對四川幾個不同會館的初步調研。清中期移民群體進入四川,建造了代表他們商業利益和宗教信仰的多功能空間,後來這些空間失去支持群體,又歷經歲月變遷,現在很多都年久失修,從宗教空間轉變為世俗空間,或者重新被賦予另一種宗教傳統,通常是佛教傳統。李莊的禹王宮,現在的佛教聖地慧光寺,就是典型的案例。由於它們多變而脆弱的属性,以及世俗化或神聖化的轉變,我調研的這些空間沒有被合理歸類,因而也被邊緣化,疏於重視和研究。這些例子有助於從歷史學的角度研究中國各地其他處於變化中的宗教場所。

Elena Valussi is a senior Lecturer in the History Department at Loyola University Chicago. Her research and publications revolve around the intersection of gender, religion and body practices, Republican discourses on gender and religion, the intellectual history of Daoism, and spirit writing in Chinese history. She is also co-editor, with Matthias Schumann, of a soon to be published book: Communicating with the Gods: Spirit-writing in Chinese History and Society, Brill, where she wrote an article on gender and spirit writing. With prof. Stefania Travagnin, she is the co-director of a research project on religious diversity in Sichuan province funded by the CCK foundation. She has been visiting professor at the University of Venice, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. She is the vice President of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions. Her most recent articles include “Daoist Sexual Practices for Health and Immortality for Women” in Handbook of Chinese Medicine, ed. by Michael Stanley Baker and Vivienne Lo, London, Routledge, 2022;“Men Built Religion, Women Made it Superstitious: Gender and Superstition in Republican China”, Journal of Chinese Religions 48.1, 2020; “Gender as a Useful Category of Analysis in Chinese religions: with two Case Studies from the Republican Period”, in Critical Concepts and Methods for the Study of Chinese Religions III: Key Concepts in Practice, edited by Stefania Travagnin and Paul Katz, Leiden, De Gruyters, 2019.

阿琳娜是芝加哥洛約拉大學歷史系的高級講師。她的研究和發表圍繞性別、宗教和身體實踐的交匯處,民國時期關於性別與宗教的論述,道教思想史,以及中國歷史上的扶乩傳統。她即將同馬蒂亞斯·舒曼一起編著並出版《與神對話:中國歷史與社會中的扶乩》(博睿出版社),此書收錄她一篇關於性別與扶乩的論文。她同史芬妮教授一同擔任四川宗教多樣性研究項目的負責人,該項目由蔣經國基金會贊助。她曾於威尼斯大學、香港中文大學及德國埃爾朗根-紐倫堡大學擔任客座教授。她目前也是中國宗教研究會(SSCR)的副主席。她最近的文章包括“為女性追求健康與長生的道教性實踐”,收錄於徐源、羅維前編《中藥指南》(倫敦:羅德里奇出版社,2022年);“男子建了宗教而女子去迷信它:民國時期的性別與迷信”,《中國宗教》48卷1期,2020年;“性別作為分析中國宗教的重要範疇:民國時期的兩個案例研究”,收錄於史芬妮、康豹編《中國宗教研究中的學術概念與方法(三):實踐中的關鍵概念》(萊頓:德古意特出版社,2019年)。

Noga Ganany is an Assistant Professor in the Study of Late Imperial China at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Her main research interests are Chinese cultural history, religious practice in China, Chinese literature and book culture, travel and pilgrimage, and popular culture. She is currently writing a book titled Origin Narratives: Hagiographic Literature and Religious Practice in Late Ming China, which examines the role of commercial publishing in propagating cultic reverence of saints, gods, and immortals among lay readers. Dr Ganany is a board member of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions (SSCR) and a board member of the Society for Ming Studies.

高諾佳是劍橋大學亞洲與中東研究系的助理教授,從事明清研究;也是劍橋悉尼·蘇塞克斯學院的研究員。她主要的研究興趣包括中國文化史、中國宗教實踐、中國古代文學與書籍文化、旅行與朝覲、以及流行文化。她目前正在撰寫《出身傳:晚明中國聖人傳記文學與宗教實踐》一書,其中探討了商業出版對於在世俗讀者之間傳播聖、神、仙崇拜所發揮的作用。高博士目前也擔任中國宗教研究會(SSCR)的理事與明史研究會(Society for Ming Studies)的理事。

Contact
Dr Noga Ganany: ng462@cam.ac.uk