Event

Virtual Book Launch

Justin McDaniel’s Wayward Distractions: Ornament, Emotion, Zombies, and the Study of Buddhism in Thailand (National University of Singapore Press, 2022)

Please join the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania for a celebration of Prof. Justin McDaniel’s recently published book Wayward Distractions: Ornament, Emotion, Zombies, and the Study of Buddhism in Thailand from the National University of Singapore Press!

We will be joined by Prof. Anne Blackburn (Asian Studies, Cornell), who will interview Prof. McDaniel about the book before opening up to audience questions.

When more than 93 per cent of the citizens of one country profess a single religion, as Thais do Buddhism, and when that religion is deeply integrated into national institutions and ideologies, it becomes tempting to think  of the religion as a textual, institutional, cultural and conceptual whole. But at the same time it is obvious that expressions of Buddhism in Thailand reflect anything but a single order: they are often gaudy, cacophonous, variegated, and jumbled: almost technicolor. Diversity and apparent contradiction are everywhere. A more open engagement with Buddhism in Thailand will require a willingness to be distracted, to step away from received hierarchies and follow the intriguing detail in the ornate design, the odd textual reference, to prefer "thin description" over a search for meaning.

Justin McDaniel's book-length writings in Buddhist and Theravada Studies are well known and widely cited, but his approach cannot be understood without taking into account his shorter writings, what he calls his wayward distractions. Collected together for the first time, and set in place by a compelling introduction that argues for a strongly materialist approach, these essays cover subjects ranging from ornamental art to marriage and emotion, the role of Hinduism, neglected gender and ethnic diversity, Buddhist inflections in contemporary art practice, and the boundaries between the living, the dead and the undead. These writings will be of importance to students of Theravada and Thailand, of religion in Southeast Asia and more generally, of the materialist turn in studies of religion.

Thursday, Feb. 10th

3:30–5:00 pm

Please email Prof. Donovan Schaefer (doschaef@upenn.edu) for the Zoom link.