Research

As a historian of religion specializing in Chinese Religions – especially late imperial and modern Chinese Buddhism – my intellectual interests include comparative religious ethics, religion and literature, and religion and media. My previous research has focused especially on repentance, theodicy, suffering, and evil. My first book, Living Karma (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), examined an important but overlooked figure in Chinese Buddhist history, a monk named Ouyi Zhixu (1599-1655) who engaged in a variety of religious practices to try to change his karma, including repentance rituals that are ubiquitous in contemporary China, Taiwan, and Chinese diaspora communities. I am currently engaged in a research project that examines Buddhist responses to suffering in a comparative context.