Education
PhD - Rice University (Religious Studies)
MA - Rice University (Religious Studies)
BA (Hons) - Duke University (Philosophy, Literature, History)

Scholarly Interests

My research interests include lived religion in contemporary China and my book Lotus Blossoms and Purple Clouds: Monastic Buddhism in Post-Mao China explores lived religion in contemporary China supported by a Fulbright Fellowship and a grant from the Asian Cultural Council. Other interests include material and spatial studies of religion, and the emerging fields of ecodharma and contemplative studies applied to personal, social, and planetary well being.

Teaching

I have served as the coordinator of the religious studies program and teach courses in Buddhism, Chinese Religions, Yoga and Meditation, and Religion and Ecology. As a teacher of Asian religions, one of my tasks is to increase religious literacy as a path to understanding others in our world and how it informs values and worldviews or influences politics and society. By cultivating these different perspectives students learn new ways of analyzing, comprehending, and engaging with their world as citizens and ethical agents. In addition to these cognitive and critical thinking gains, I also incorporate experiential forms of learning which engage the whole person and foster embodied forms of knowing, self-awareness, and empathy. Such experiential activities include site visits and mindfulness.

Select Publications

Lotus Blossoms and Purple Clouds: Monastic Buddhism in Post-Mao China, University of Hawaii Press, 2002.

"A History of Chinese Buddhism" in Routledge Resources Online: Chinese Studies, Chinese Religion, Philosophy, and Cultural Studies. Edited by C. Shei, and Z. Lu, 2024. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367565152-RECHS96-1

"Earth-Based Mindfulness and Meditation: An Exploration of Ecodharma Practices." Published online by the BESS Family Foundation.  Lead Author, commissioned by the BESS Foundation, 2024. https://online.flippingbook.com/view/18874694/

"Bodily Contraction Arises with Dukkha: Embodied Learning to Foster Racial Healing" Religions 12 (12): 1108. (2021)  https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12121108

“Interrogating Religious Tourism at Buddhist Monasteries in China” in Buddhist Tourism in Asia: Imagining, Secularizing, and Commodifying the Sacred.  Edited by Courtney Bruntz and Brooke Schedneck, 183-205. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2020.

“Advancing the Ethnography of Buddhism in China" in Concepts and Methods for the Study of Chinese Religions I: State of the Field and Disciplinary Approaches. Edited by André Laliberté and Stefania Travagnin, 139-162. Berlin: DeGruyter, 2019.

"Tourist Temples and Places of Practice: Charting Multiple Paths in the Revival of Monastic Buddhism" in Buddhism after Mao. Edited by Ji Zhe, A. Laliberte, G. Fisher, 97-119. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2019.

“Taking Welch and The Practice of Chinese Buddhism into the 21^st Century.” Studies in Chinese Religions 3(3): 258-280 (2017).