Please note the new time and location for our 2017-18 lecture series.

The Dali Kingdom governed a large swath of territory in what is now southwest China and Southeast Asia. Its rulers embraced Buddhism, especially the state-protection Buddhism of the Renwang jing (Scripture for Humane Kings), which was written in fifth-century China. This talk uses texts and images related to the Renwang jing from the Dali kingdom to examine how border regions like Dali challenge the academic category of “Chinese Buddhism.”

Megan Bryson is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her research focuses on Buddhism and local religion in the Dali region of southwest China as well as the themes of gender and ethnicity in Chinese religions. Professor Bryson has published several articles on these topics in journals such as "Asian Ethnology", "Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies", and "Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society". Her monograph, “Goddess on the Frontier: Religion, Ethnicity, and Gender in Southwest China” was published by Stanford University Press last year. She spent the 2016-17 academic year on an ACLS fellowship to work on a new project on Buddhist networks in the Dali kingdom.