Feminist Historiographies in Buddhist Studies with Amy Paris Langenberg 15 March 2025

SeminarFeminist Historiographies in Buddhist Studies
Date10am - 1pm 15 March 2025
HostSOAS Centre of Buddhist Studies
Registerhttps://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/feminist-historiographies-buddhist-studies

Feminist Historiographies in Buddhist Studies

This seminar will explore various approaches to feminist historiography in Buddhist Studies.
It will pose the question of what changes in our understanding of premodern Buddhisms when, instead of following the grain of Buddhist sources in focusing primarily on elite or dominant perspectives, we read against the grain of texts, focusing in a deliberate way on illuminating the less-well represented and harder to reach experiences and doctrinal positions of minority voices, especially ascetic and other Buddhist women.
We will also necessarily explore the hows of writing such histories. What specific sources or reading practices can be helpful or are necessary? 
During the seminar, we will together consider a few carefully chosen recent examples of feminist historiographical work in the field of Buddhist Studies. The group will also close read and compare several relevant textual passages from the bhikṣuṇī-vinaya and a haṭha yoga text in order to experiment with and discuss feminist historiographical approaches. Proficiency in Sanskrit (or Chinese) is helpful but not necessary.
About the Speakers
Amy Paris Langenberg is Professor of Religious Studies at Eckerd College in Florida, USA. She specializes in South Asian Buddhism, with a focus on gender, sexuality, and female monasticisms. Her work combines textual and ethnographic approaches. She is author of Birth in Buddhism: The Suffering Fetus and Female Freedom (Routledge, 2017) and has published articles in History of Religions, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Religion Compass, Religious Studies Review, and the Journal of Global Buddhism. Her most recent project is a study of sexual abuse in North American and transnational Buddhism, co-written with Ann Gleig, to be published in 2026 by Yale University Press.
Ruth Westoby is Junior Research Fellow in Jaina Studies at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies with a focus on technologies of the body. In addition, Ruth is an Associate Researcher at Inform, based at King’s College London, researching menstruation in contemporary religions. Ruth holds a PhD from SOAS University of London on ‘The Body in Early Haṭha Yoga’ (2024). Ruth is currently working on a book project from her doctoral thesis ‘Reversing Reproduction in Haṭha Yoga’. Her research focuses on the materiality of the body and sexuality from critical theoretical and medical humanities perspectives.