CFP: The Tung Lin Kok Yuen Conference: Buddhism and Diaspora (30 Oct; 14-16 May; U Toronto, Scarborough)

The Department of Humanities, University of Toronto Scarborough, is pleased to present

A Call for Papers

The Tung Lin Kok Yuen Conference: Buddhism and Diaspora

Friday May 14- Sunday May 16, 2010
University of Toronto Scarborough

For more information, please visit our website:
http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~humdiv/TLKY/event3

Keynote Address, Friday May 14th: Professor Victor Hori (McGill
University)

This international and interdisciplinary conference will examine
the role religion, and specifically Buddhism, plays within
diasporic communities. Communities like Chinese Buddhists,
Tibetans, Newars, Sinhalese, and many others have brought with
them, translated, or alternately reformulated specific types of
Buddhism as crucial pieces in the ongoing negotiation of their
cultural and social identities. In this context, the conference
inquires whether there have been or are currently specific ways
that Buddhism has answered the challenges, problems, and
expectations that accompany displacement and relocation.

This conference will question the role diaspora has had in the
history and self-perception of Buddhism through the ages, both
within Asia and during its more modern spread to other parts of
the world. This can prompt us to examine how Buddhism has figured
in developing and changing notions related to authenticity,
tradition, ethnicity, belonging, nation, and landscape, in the
light of displacement, exile, violence, travel, and integration.
By thematizing diaspora as a situation in which both Buddhism's
local articulations as well as its trans-local content are
confronted, questioned and reformulated, this conference is an
opportunity to bridge current methodological and thematic
dichotomies between current ethnographic and text-oriented
approaches in the study of Buddhism and Buddhist societies. These
questions will help address larger issues of how Buddhist texts
and Buddhist practitioners conceptualize and participate in the
formation of lived diaspora in both modern and historic settings.

The conference will encourage speakers to probe into the
following questions:

- How may a Buddhist heritage account for a certain kind of
diasporic experience?
- Which strategies do Buddhist agents, practice and doctrine
offer to mediate between the locality of the community's
provenance and that of its host country? Between the diasporic
communities and other religious communities? Between the
political and economic conditions of their displacement?
- What role does Buddhism play in the creation of such
conditions?
- What kind of new forms of religiosity emerge from such transfer
and reconfiguration?

This conference will address such questions through multiple
formats for scholarly inquiry, namely organized panels with
discussants, roundtables, keynotes lectures, and public events.

The program committee welcomes proposals for papers from
academics, professionals, graduate students and others. Proposals
that include a max 300 word abstract of the paper and a short
academic CV should be made online through our submissions site
at: http://link.library.utoronto.ca/buddhiststudies/conference/

At this website applicants can cut and paste both abstract and CV
into our web form.
The deadline for submissions is October 30, 2009. Participants
will be notified by December 1st if their submission has been
successful.

This conference is sponsored generously by an endowment for the
advancement of Buddhist studies, made possible by a gift from the
Tung Lin Kok Yuen Foundation (Hong Kong) to the University of
Toronto Scarborough. Questions about this event or any other
aspect of the Tung Lin Kok Yuen Conference Series in Buddhist
Studies may be addressed to Sarah Richardson at:
tlkyconf at utsc dot utoronto dot ca