Faculty & Staff
Faculty
Paul Copp , Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in Chinese Religion, East Asian Languages and Civilizations.
Teaching and Research Interests:
Medieval Chinese religious texts and practices; intellectual, material, and visual cultures of medieval Chinese Buddhism; Dunhuang manuscripts and manuscriptology; ritual poetics.
I’ve recently completed a book manuscript entitled Incantatory Bodies: Spells and Material Efficacy in Chinese Buddhist Practice, 600-1000, which explores amuletic traditions of Chinese Buddhist incantation practice.
Current projects include a large-scale study of evidence for personal religious practice at Dunhuang in the ninth and tenth centuries, focusing on local versions of Esoteric Buddhist practice; smaller studies of “Buddho-Daoist” religious practice in Song Dynasty Sichuan; and explorations of the scholastic literature of Tang, Five Dynasties, and Northern Song Buddhism (focusing, again, on the literature of the Esoteric traditions).
Selected Publications:
“Notes on the Term 'Dhāraṇī' in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Thought.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 71, 3 (2008), 493–508.
“Altar, Amulet, Icon: Transformations in Dhāraṇī Amulet Culture, 740-980.” Forthcoming in Cahiers d’Extreme- Asie.
“Dhāraṇī Amulets in Chinese Tombs and the Later History of Early Buddhist Incantation Practice,” forthcoming in a Yale University Press volume on Esoteric Buddhism in East Asia, ed. Youngsook Pak and Roderick Whitfield.
Courses:
Religion in Medieval Dunhuang (Grad Seminar, Spring 2010)
Readings in Chinese Buddhist Texts (Grad Seminar, Winter 2008, 2010)
Chinese Buddhism: Philosophy, Fantasy, and Devotion (Undergrad, Autumn 2009)
Esoteric Buddhism in Tang China: Yixing’s Commentary on the Mahāvairocana Sūtra (Grad Seminar, Winter 2009)
Sources and Methods in the Study of Daoism (Grad Seminar, Autumn 2008)
Classics of Chinese Religious Thought (Undergrad, Autumn 2007, 2008)
Sources and Methods in the Study of Chinese Buddhism (Grad Seminar, Autumn 2007)
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