HTOR0103FU Cancelled Summer school on Contemporary Buddhism (Summer School)

Volume 2019/2020
Education
  • Programme curriculum to be announced

 

The course is geared towards students who are interested in learning more about Contemporary Buddhist Studies. Contemporary Buddhist Studies is a burgeoning field which has not yet taken root in universities and study programmes around the world. The summer school will bring together interested students from around the world who wish to participate in an active learning environment with the world’s foremost scholars of Contemporary Buddhism

 

 

Content

The summer school on Contemporary Buddhism offers a rich learning environment with a diversity of teaching formats that will help to immerse the student in Contemporary Buddhist Studies, thereby acquiring a great amount of knowledge in just two weeks. This course enquires into contemporary Buddhism as an interdisciplinary topic of investigation through bridging area studies, religious studies, anthropology, sociology and political science. Building upon an introduction to some key concepts of Buddhism, we explore how ‘Buddhism’ is employed within various contexts in Asia and beyond, while paying attention to possible contradictions, contentions and contentment with contemporary issues, which include: Buddhist modernity and secularism, commodification of Buddhism and the spiritual marketplace, entanglements of Buddhism with politics, changing roles of women in Buddhism, Buddhism and new media, and travels and cultural translations.

The summer school will offer lectures by foremost scholars of Contemporary Buddhist Studies, engaged discussion groups with scholars, field visits to sites of Contemporary Buddhism to learn fieldwork skills and ethnography, and individual research projects on a topic of the student’s choice to go more in-depth in a particular field of interest related to Contemporary Buddhist Studies. Moreover, throughout the course we will work with various media formats and discuss how to engage with public scholarship through twitter, blogs, and other social media sites.  

The exam is based on active attendance. Requirements for passing the course is 75% attendance, participation in classroom and group discussions, delivering 3-4 shorter written assignments and delivering one oral presentation on a topic of interest..

Learning Outcome

Area studies, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, political science.

 

To be announced

See https:/​/​hum.ku.dk/​uddannelser/​aktuelle_studieordninger/​.

Must have completed one year of Bachelor studies. The summer school combines approaches from the Humanities and Social Sciences, but interested students from other disciplines are also welcome to apply.
If students have no previous experience studying Buddhist Studies or Contemporary Buddhist Studies, we highly recommend reading two suggested books before coming to the summer school:
Harvy, Peter 2013. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. (521 pages)
Keown, Damien 2013. Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, Oxford University Press. (158 pages).

The required syllabus readings will be announced later.
The days of the summer school will be broken into blocks of time with a variety of teaching formats and activities. There will be formal lectures and group discussions led by leading professors of Contemporary Buddhism who engage in research in different parts of the world. Students will be introduced to key concepts and seminal work within the field of Contemporary Buddhist Studies. There will also be blocks for discussion time, group work, writing assignments, learning fieldwork methods and ethnography, and field visits where students will gain a firsthand experience of how contemporary Buddhism manifests in new places such as Denmark.
To apply for the course, students must include a motivation letter expressing why they would like to take this course and any previous experience with Buddhist Studies, maximum one page. Note: this course is not meant for students interested in learning about Buddhist philosophy and the tenets of Buddhism. In this course, we focus on ‘lived Buddhism’ not on text-based studies of Buddhism.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Excursions
  • 40
  • Lectures
  • 42
  • Preparation
  • 124,25
  • Total
  • 206,25
Credit
7,5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Other