Event

This presentation explores the way Myanmar’s natural resources have shaped its religious life, and how its religious life shapes the country’s extractive industries. Long famous for jade, rubies, teak, gold, and silver, this Southeast Asian country has a complex history of relationships between humans, non-humans, and the land. This presentation focuses on artifacts and texts from Burma’s Konbaung period (1752–1885 CE), to understand how Burmese political and religious institutions have used extractive industries to naturalize Buddhist sovereignty.

Alexandra Kaloyanides is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where her teaching focuses on Asian religions and material culture. She is the author of Baptizing Burma: Religious Change in the Last Buddhist Kingdom (Columbia University Press, 2023).