Religious Studies Faculty Book Gallery

This collection features books and book contributions written by faculty in the Department of Religious Studies at Fairfield University.

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Accidental Theologians: Four Women Who Shaped Christianity

Elizabeth A. Dreyer

One might well be tempted to think that the history of Christianity, particularly its theology, has been largely shaped by men. This book dispels that notion to some degree by highlighting the four women Doctors of the Catholic Church (someone who contributes significantly to the formulation of Christian teaching): Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, and Thérèse of Lisieux. Though they did not intend to be theologians, their teachings about Christian belief and practice mark them as key figures in the history of Christianity. While most of the books written about these four women deals mainly with their spirituality, Accidental Theologians shows how they came to know God, as well as how they changed and challenged the Church in their day. It looks at these women from several perspectives: their life and works, the times in which they lived, the core of their theology, and the implications of their theology for us. Cogent questions for reflection at the end of each chapter prompt readers to delve deeper into the significance of these women for their own lives, and a comprehensive resource list provides opportunities to learn more about these saints. --Publisher's Description
The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions

Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, and John C. Endres

At the origin of the Watchers tradition is the single enigmatic reference in Genesis 6 to the “sons of God” who had intercourse with human women, producing a race of giants upon the earth. That verse sparked a wealth of cosmological and theological speculation in early Judaism. Here leading scholars explore the contours of the Watchers traditions through history, tracing their development through the Enoch literature, Jubilees, and other early Jewish and Christian writings. This volume provides a lucid survey of current knowledge and interpretation of one of the most intriguing theological motifs of the Second Temple period. -- Publisher description.
The Fallen Angels Traditions: Second Temple Developments and Reception History

Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, and John C. Endres

In addition to being a co-editor, Angela Kim Harkins is also a contributing author, "Elements of the Fallen Angels Traditions in the Qumran Hodayot", pp. 8-24.

Book description: This is volume 53 of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monographic Series and contains: Genesis 6:1-4 and the angel stories in the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36) / James C. VanderKam -- Elements of the fallen angels traditions in the Qumran Hodayot / Angela Kim Harkins -- The Watchers in rewritten scripture: the use of the Book of the Watchers in Jubilees / Todd R. Hanneken -- The fall and fate of renegade angels: the intersection of Watchers traditions and the Book of Revelation / Kelley Coblentz Bautch -- Resurgent myth: on the vitality of the Watchers traditions in the Near East of late antiquity / John C. Reeves -- Dreamy angels and demonic giants: the Watchers traditions and the origin of evil in early Christian demonology / Silviu N. Bunta -- The Watchers traditions in the Apocryphon of John: fallen angels and the arrogant creator in Gnostic mythology / Pheme Perkins -- The magical arts, angelic intercourse, and giant offspring: echoes of Watchers traditions in medieval scholastic theology / Franklin T. Harkins.
Encyclopedia of Populism in America: A Historical Encyclopedia

Alexandra Kindell, Elizabeth S. Demers, and Lydia Willsky-Ciollo

Lydia Willsky-Ciollo is a contributing author, "Mary Baker Eddy" - pages 197-199, "Burned-Over District" - pages 94-96, and "William Lloyd Garrison" -pages 264-267."

Book description: This comprehensive two-volume encyclopedia documents how Populism, which grew out of post-Civil War agrarian discontent, was the apex of populist impulses in American culture from colonial times to the present. The Populist Movement was founded in the late 1800s when farmers and other agrarian workers formed cooperative societies to fight exploitation by big banks and corporations. Today, populism encompasses both right-wing and left-wing movements, organizations, and icons. This valuable encyclopedia examines how ordinary people have voiced their opposition to the prevailing political, economic, and social constructs of the past as well how the elite or leaders at the time have reacted to that opposition. The entries spotlight the people, events, organizations, and ideas that created this first major challenge to the two-party system in the United States. Additionally, attention is paid to important historical actors who are not traditionally considered "Populist" but were instrumental in paving the way for the movement—or vigorously resisted Populism's influence on American culture. This encyclopedia also shows that Populism as a specific movement, and populism as an idea, have served alternately to further equal rights in America—and to limit them.
Becoming Beholders: Cultivating Sacramental Imagination and Actions in College Classrooms

Thomas M. Landy, Karen E. Eifler, Angela Kim Harkins, and Michael P. Pagano

Angela Kim Harkins is a contributing author, "Cultivating Empathy and Mindfulness: Religious Praxis", pp. 275-288.

Michael Pagano is a contributing author, "Exorcizing taboos: teaching end-of-life communication", pp. 176-191.

Book description: Catholic colleges and universities have long engaged in conversation about how to fulfill their mission in creative ways across the curriculum. The "sacramental vision" of Catholic higher education posits that God is made manifest in the study of all disciplines. Becoming Beholders is the first book to share pedagogical strategies about how to do that. Twenty faculty—from many religious backgrounds and teaching in fields as varied as chemistry, economics, English, history, mathematics, sociology, and theology—discuss ways that their teaching nourishes students' ability to find the transcendent in their studies. -- Publisher description
Disasters and Tragic Events [2 volumes]: An Encyclopedia of Catastrophes in American History

Mitchell Newton-Matza and Lydia Willsky-Ciollo

Lydia Willsky-Ciollo is a contributing author, " 1770 Boston Massacre - - pages 12-15, 1919 and Boston Molasses Disaster - pages 255-257".

Book description: From the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 to the Sandy Hook school massacre of 2012, this two-volume encyclopedia surveys tragic events—natural and man-made, famous and forgotten—that helped shape American history. Tragedies and disasters have always been part of the fabric of American history. Some gave rise to reactions that profoundly influenced the nation. Others dominated public consciousness for a moment, then disappeared from collective memory. Organized chronologically, Disasters and Tragic Events examines these moments, covering both the familiar and the obscure and probing their immediate and long-term effects. Unlike other works that concentrate on a particular type of disaster, for example, weather- or medicine-related tragedies, this two-volume encyclopedia has no such limits. Its entries range from natural disasters, such as hurricanes and tornadoes, to civic disturbances, environmental disasters, epidemics and medical errors, transportation accidents, and more.
Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qur'anic Exegesis (2nd/8th-9th/15th Centuries)

Karen Butler and Martin Nguyen

Martin Nguyen is a contributing author, "Letter by Letter: Tracing the Textual Genealogy of a Sufi Tafsir," 217-240.

Book description: Medieval interpretations of the Qur'an often serve as points of reference for Muslim thought; yet Qur'an commentaries were shaped not only by the Qur'an itself, but also by their authors' ideological viewpoints, their theories of interpretation, their methods, and the conventions of the genre. This volume is the first to focus solely on the complicated relationship between exegetes' theoretical aims, their practical methods of writing, and the historical and intellectual contexts of Qur'an commentaries (tafsir). Experts in various aspects of the Qur'an and its interpretation have contributed essays, spanning the 2nd/8th to the 9th/15th centuries, the period in which the commentarial tradition developed and flourished. They emphasise the ways in which geography, human networks, hermeneutical systems and genre boundaries affected the writing of these texts. This volume offers fresh analytical perspectives and addresses new methods for the study of tafsir. It also provides resources for scholars, by including editions and translations of the introductions to al-Basit of Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali al-Wahidi (d. 486/1076) and the Tahdhib fi Tafsir al-Quran of al-Hakim al-Jishumi (d. 494/1101), as well as translated selections from the introduction to the tafsir of 'Abd al-Razzaq al-Kashani (d. 736/1336). The detailed studies in this volume will help scholars and students alike to comprehend accurately the purpose and content of Qur'an commentaries individually and as a genre.
Literature of Protest (Critical Insights)

Kimberly Drake and Lydia Willsky-Ciollo

Lydia Willsky-Ciollo is a contributing author, ""Countering the Rhetoric of Slavery: The Critical Roots and Critical Reception of Uncle Tom's Cabin".

Book Description: A survey of fiction that examines society and politics from the margins, often with radical and alternative views of the world. The literature of protest is defined as fiction and poetry that emerges from minority social positions and will critique majority status quo conditions. This literature covers a wide range of periods and will emerge from a variety of international authors and events, from American abolitionist narratives to the critique of the totalitarianism in 1920s Soviet politics. Rounding out the volume are a list of literary works not mentioned in the book that concern the theme as well as a bibliography of critical sources for readers seeking to study this timeless theme in greater depth. -- Publisher description.
Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture

Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, Lawrence H. Schiffman, and Angela Kim Harkins

Angela Kim Harkins is a contributing author, "Thanksgiving Hymns (Hodayot"), pp. 2018-2094.

Book description: The Hebrew Bible is only part of ancient Israel’s writings. Another collection of Jewish works has survived from late- and post-biblical times, a great library that bears witness to the rich spiritual life of Jews in that period. This library consists of the most varied sorts of texts: apocalyptic visions and prophecies, folktales and legends, collections of wise sayings, laws and rules of conduct, commentaries on Scripture, ancient prayers, and much, much more. While specialists have studied individual texts or subsections of this vast library, Outside the Bible seeks for the first time to bring together all the major components into a single collection, gathering portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, the biblical Apocrypha, and Pseudepigrapha, and the writings of Philo of Alexandria and Josephus. The editors have brought together these diverse works in order to highlight what has often been neglected; their common Jewish background. For this reason the commentaries that accompany the texts devote special attention to references to Hebrew Scripture and to issues of halakhah (Jewish law), their allusions to motifs and themes known from later Rabbinic writings in Talmud and Midrash, their evocation of recent or distant events in Jewish history, and their references to other texts in this collection. The work of more than seventy contributing experts in a range of fields, Outside the Bible offers new insights into the development of Judaism and Early Christianity. This three-volume set of translations, introductions, and detailed commentaries is a must for scholars, students, and anyone interested in this great body of ancient Jewish writings. -- Publisher description
A Council That Will Never End: Lumen Gentium and the Church Today

Paul F. Lakeland

Lumen Gentium, Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, changed how the church thinks about the laity, holiness, baptism, and even the nature and purpose of the church itself. In A Council That Will Never End, the highly regarded ecclesiologist Paul Lakeland marks the fiftieth anniversary of this document's promulgation by taking up three major themes of the constitution, analyzing the text, and identifying some of the questions with which it leaves us. These themes are:

-the role of the bishop in the church and the ways Lumen Gentium's teaching relates to various tensions in today's church

-the laity and in particular the mixed blessing of describing them in the category of "secularity"

-and the relationships between the church and the people of God and what they tell us about the ways in which all people are offered salvation.

Lakeland is convinced that Lumen Gentium leaves much unfinished business (as any historical document must), that attending to it will take us beyond much of the now sterile ecclesial divisions, and that the ecclesiology of humility it implies marks the way that theology must guide the church in the years ahead.
Icons of Hope: the 'Last Things' in Catholic Imagination

John E. Thiel

Winner of the 2014 Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award.

In Icons of Hope: The “Last Things” in Catholic Imagination, John Thiel, one of the most influential Catholic theologians today, argues that modern theologians have been unduly reticent in their writing about “last things”: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Beholden to a historical-critical standard of interpretation, they often have been reluctant to engage in eschatological reflection that takes the doctrine of the “last things” seriously as real events that Christians are obliged to imagine meaningfully and to describe with some measure of faithful coherence. Modern theology’s religious pluralism leaves room for a speculative style of interpretation that issues in icons of hope—theological portraits of resurrected life that can inform and inspire the life of faith.

Icons of Hope presents an interpretation of heavenly life, the Last Judgment, and the communion of the saints that is shaped by a view of the activity of the blessed dead consistent with Christian belief in the resurrection of the body, namely, the view that the blessed dead in heaven continue to be eschatologically engaged in the redemptive task of forgiveness. Thiel offers a revision of the traditional Catholic imaginary regarding judgment and life after death that highlights the virtuous actions of all the saints in their heavenly response to the vision of God. These constructive efforts are fostered by Thiel’s conclusions on the disappearance of the concept of purgatory in large segments of contemporary Catholic belief, a disappearance attributable to the emergence of a noncompetitive spirituality in postconciliar Catholicism, which has eclipsed the kinds of religious sensibilities that made belief in purgatory a practice in earlier centuries. This noncompetitive spirituality—one that recovers traditional Pauline sensibilities on the gratuitousness of grace—encourages an eschatological imaginary of mutual, ongoing forgiveness in the communion of the saints in this life and in the life to come.
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

Gerhard Böwering and Martin Nguyen

Martin Nguyen is a contributing author, "Piety and Asceticism," 415-416.

Book description: The first encyclopedia of Islamic political thought from the birth of Islam to today, this comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible reference provides the context needed for understanding contemporary politics in the Islamic world and beyond. With more than 400 alphabetically arranged entries written by an international team of specialists, the volume focuses on the origins and evolution of Islamic political ideas and related subjects, covering central terms, concepts, personalities, movements, places, and schools of thought across Islamic history. Fifteen major entries provide a synthetic treatment of key topics, such as Muhammad, jihad, authority, gender, culture, minorities, fundamentalism, and pluralism. Incorporating the latest scholarship, this is an indispensable resource for students, researchers, journalists, and anyone else seeking an informed perspective on the complex intersection of Islam and politics.
Women, Wisdom, and Witness: Engaging Contexts in Conversation

Rosemary P. Carbine, Kathleen J. Dolphin, and Nancy Dallavalle

Nancy Dallavalle is a contributing author, “Icons and Integrity: Catholic Women in the Church and in the Public Square".

Book description: The New Voices Seminar is a lively, intergenerational, and diverse group of women scholars who take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Christianity. Under the leadership of Kathleen Dolphin, the seminar gathers annually at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, for collegial and collaborative conversation about women in the church and in the world. With Women, Wisdom, and Witness, readers are invited to join their conversation. This collection of essays by seminar members addresses significant contexts of contemporary women's experience: suffering and resistance, education, and the crossroads of religion and public life. Theology is brought to bear on some pressing issues in our time: poverty, sexual norms, trauma and slavery, health care, immigration, and the roles of women in academia and in the church. Readers will discover the rich socio-political, interdisciplinary, and dialogical implications of Catholic women's intellectual and social praxis in contemporary theology and ethics.
Vatican II: A Universal Call to Holiness

Anthony Ciorra, Michael W. Higgins, and Nancy Dallavalle

Nancy Dallavalle is a contributing author, “To Workers: Work and the Working Life Fifty Years After the Council".

Book description: A collection of presentations from the Vatican II Conference, A Universal Call to Holiness, held at Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT. Seven of the presentations are based on the seven speeches given by several cardinals at the conclusion of the council on December 8, 1965.
Reading with an ‘I’ to the Heavens: Looking at the Qumran Hodayot through the Lens of Visionary Traditions

Angela Kim Harkins

This book examines the collection of prayers known as the Qumran Hodayot (= Thanksgiving Hymns) in light of ancient visionary traditions, new developments in neuropsychology, and post-structuralist understandings of the embodied subject. The thesis of this book is that the ritualized reading of reports describing visionary experiences written in the first person "I" had the potential to create within the ancient reader the subjectivity of a visionary which can then predispose him to have a religious experience. This study examines how references to the body and the strategic arousal of emotions could have functioned within a practice of performative reading to engender a religious experience of ascent. In so doing, this book offers new interdisciplinary insights into meditative ritual reading as a religious practice for transformation in antiquity.
A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam. 2 Vols.

Eric F. Mason, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, Angela Kim Harkins, and Daniel Machiela

Angela Kim Harkins is a co-editor of volume 2 as well as a contributing author, “Who is the Teacher of the Teacher Hymns? Re-examining the Teacher Hymns Hypothesis Fifty Years Later.” Pages 449-467.

Book description: These essays honor James C. VanderKam on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday and twentieth year on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame. Essays from an international group of scholars address various topics in Second Temple Judaism and biblical studies.
The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology

Ian A. McFarland, David A. S. Fergusson, Karen Kilby, Iain R. Torrance, and John E. Thiel

John E. Thiel is a contributing author, "Tradition," pp.510-12.

With over 550 entries ranging from Abba to Zwingli composed by leading contemporary theologians from around the world, The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology represents a fresh, ecumenical approach to theological reference. Written with an emphasis on clarity and concision, all entries are designed to help the reader understand and assess the specifically theological significance of the most important concepts. Clearly structured, the volume is organized around a small number of 'core entries' which focus on key topics to provide a general overview of major subject areas, while making use of related shorter entries to impart a more detailed knowledge of technical terms. The work as a whole provides an introduction to the defining topics in Christian thought and is an essential reference point for students and scholars.
Sufi Master and Qur'an Scholar: Abūʼl-Qāsim al-Qushayrī and the Lạtāʼif al-ishārāt

Martin Nguyen

Book description: This book is the first extensive examination of the medieval Qur'an commentary known as the Lata'if al-isharat and the first critical biography of its author, the famous spiritual master Abu al-Qasim al-Qushayri. Written in 5th/11th century Nishapur, an intellectual and cultural crossroads of the Muslim world, the Lata'if al-isharat has endured down through the centuries as an important work of Sufi exegesis. A mystical vision of reality is taught through its line-by-line treatment of the Qur'an as its author was writing as both a Sufi teacher and scholar. This study fully investigates al-Qushayri's life and historical horizon and carefully analyses the structure and method of the commentary. The primary aim of the book is to draw greater attention to the other traditions of exegesis that inform the Sufi approach of the Lata'if al-isharat, an understudied feature of many Sufi commentaries in general. In the case of this commentary, scholarly and pedagogical concerns for language, prophetic sayings, law and theology are interwoven into al-Qushayri's overarching mystical exegesis. Other important aspects of the author's intellectual identity and education clearly influenced the formation of al-Qushayri's Sufi worldview and as a consequence his interpretation of God's word. By delineating these other traditions of exegesis mentioned in al-Qushayri's biography and embedded in his Lata'if al-isharat, we can better appreciate how he and his commentary were part of a wider Sunni historical heritage in addition to the developing Sufi tradition.
Experientia, Volume 2: Moving from Text to Experience

Colleen Shantz, Rodney Werline, and Angela Kim Harkins

Angela Kim Harkins is a contributing author, "Religious Experience through the Lens of Critical Spatiality: A Look at Embodiment Language in Prayers and Hymns", pp. 223-242.

Book description: This collection of essays continues the investigation of religious experience in early Judaism and early Christianity begun in Experientia, Volume 1, by addressing one of the traditional objections to the study of experience in antiquity. The authors address the relationship between the surviving evidence, which is textual, and the religious experiences that precede or ensue from those texts. Drawing on insights from anthropology, sociology, social memory theory, neuroscience, and cognitive science, they explore a range of religious phenomena including worship, the act of public reading, ritual, ecstasy, mystical ascent, and the transformation of gender and of emotions. Through careful and theoretically informed work, the authors demonstrate the possibility of moving from written documents to assess the lived experiences that are linked to them. The contributors are István Czachesz, Frances Flannery, Robin Griffith-Jones, Angela Kim Harkins, Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, John R. Levison, Carol A. Newsom, Rollin A. Ramsaran, Colleen Shantz, Leif E. Vaage, and Rodney A. Werline. -- Publisher description.
Jesuit and Feminist Education: Intersections in Teaching and Learning for the Twenty-first Century

Jocelyn M. Boryczka, Elizabeth A. Petrino, Paul F. Lakeland, and Elizabeth A. Dreyer

Elizabeth Dreyer is a contributing author, "Do as I do, not as I say: A pedagogy of action," p.21-36.

Paul Lakeland is a contributing author, "Paideia and the Political Process: The Unexplored Coincidence of Jesuit and Feminist Pedagogical Visions", pp. 136-146.

Book description: Given its long tradition of authentic dialogue with other religious and philosophical perspectives, Jesuit education is uniquely suited to address the range of opportunities and challenges teachers and students face in the twenty-first century. At first glance, Jesuit and feminist ways of understanding the world appear to be antagonistic approaches to teaching and learning. But much can be gained by focusing on how feminism, in dialogue with Jesuit education, can form, inform, and transform each other, our institutions, and the people in them. Both traditions are committed to educating the whole person by integrating reason and emotion. Both also argue for connecting theory and practice and applying knowledge in context. As unabashedly value-driven educational approaches, both openly commit to social justice and an end to oppression in its many forms. With strong humanistic roots, Jesuit and feminist education alike promote the liberal arts as critical to developing engaged citizens of the world.

This book explores how the principles and practices of Ignatian pedagogy overlap and intersect with contemporary feminist theory in order to gain deeper insight into the complexities of today’s multicultural educational contexts. Drawing on intersectionality, a method of inquiry that locates individual and collective standpoints in relation to social, political, and economic structures, the volume highlights points of convergence and divergence between Ignatian pedagogy, a five-hundred year old humanistic tradition, and more recent feminist theory in order to explore how educators might find strikingly similar methods that advocate common goals—including engaging with issues such as race, gender, diversity, and social justice. By reflecting on these shared perspectives and inherent differences from both practical and theoretical approaches, the contributors of this volume initiate a dynamic dialogue about Jesuit and feminist education that will enliven and impact our campuses for years to come.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Books of the Bible

Michael D. Coogan and Angela Kim Harkins

Angela Kim Harkins is a contributing author, "Hymns and Prayers.” pp. 175-83.

Book description: Books of the Bible provides a single source for authoritative reference overviews of scholarship on some of the most important topics of study in the field of biblical studies. The Encyclopedia contains almost 120 in-depth entries, ranging in length from 500 to 10,000 words, on each of the canonical books of the Bible, major apocryphal books of the New and Old Testaments, important noncanonical texts, and thematic essays on topics such as canonicity, textual criticism, and translation.

Books of the Bible has extensive cross-references to other useful points of interest within the Encyclopedia, and comprehensive lists of abbreviations and an index for ease of use. Illustrations of various types supplement the text and enhance its appeal. Bibliographies for all entries further add to its usefulness.
Transformation and Transfer of Tantra/Tantrism in Asia and Beyond

István Keul and Ronald M. Davidson

Ronald M. Davidson is a contributing author, "Observations on an Usnisa Abhiseka Rite in Atikuta's Dharanisamgraha", pp. 77-98.

The essays in this volume, written by specialists working in the field of tantric studies, attempt to trace processes of transformation and transfer that occurred in the history of tantra from around the seventh century and up to the present. The volume gathers contributions on South Asia, Tibet, China, Mongolia, Japan, North America, and Western Europe by scholars from various academic disciplines, who present ongoing research and encourage discussion on significant themes in the growing field of tantric studies. In addition to the extensive geographical and temporal range, the chapters of the volume cover a wide thematic area, which includes modern Bengali tantric practitioners, tantric ritual in medieval China, the South Asian cults of the mother goddesses, the way of Buddhism into Mongolia, and countercultural echoes of contemporary tantric studies.
Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe

Volkhard Krecht, Marion Steinicke, and Ronald M. Davidson

Ronald M. Davidson is a contributing author, "Canon and Identity in Indian Esoteric Buddhism as the Confluence of Cultures", pp. 321-341.

This first volume of the series “Dynamics in the History of Religions” reviews the opening conference of the "Käte Hamburger Kolleg” at the Ruhr-University Bochum. The first section concentrates on the formation of what later come to be termed "world religions" through inter-religious contact, the second part focuses on the significance of interreligious contacts also during their expansive phase. Methodological problems of multi-perspective research and especially the lack of a general religious terminology are discussed in the third chapter, while the final papers outline various aspects of secularization and (re-)sacralisation in the age of globalisation as an effect of multicultural contacts in a world wide web of religious interferences.
Buddhist Himalaya: Studies in Religion, History and Culture, vol. 1 [Proceedings of the Golden Jubilee Conference of the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, Gangtok, 2008]

Alex McKay, Anna Balikci-Denjongpa, and Ronald M. Davidson

Ronald M. Davidson is a contributing author, "Himalayan Buddhist Valleys as Tantric Ecologies", pp. 135-150.

The Namgyal Institute of Tibetology in Gangtok, Sikkim (India) is delighted to announce the publication of the proceedings of the NIT Jubilee Conference held in Gangtok in 2008, which was attended by leading scholars from around 20 nations. The proceedings contain nearly 50 original articles on the religion, history and culture of the Buddhist Himalayas, with a particular emphasis on Sikkim.
Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia: A Handbook for Scholars

Charles Orzech, Henrik H. Sørensen, Richard K. Payne, and Ronald M. Davidson

Ronald M. Davidson is a contributing author, "Abhiseka" and "Sources and Inspirations", pp. 19-27 and 71-75.

In all likelihood, it was the form of Buddhism labeled “Esoteric Buddhism” that had the greatest geographical spread of any form of Buddhism. It left its imprint not only on its native India, but far beyond, on Southeast Asia, Central Asia, including Tibet and Mongolia, as well as the East Asian countries China, Korea and Japan. Not only has Esoteric Buddhism contributed substantially to the development of Buddhism in many cultures, but it also facilitated the transmission of religious art and material culture, science and technology. This volume, the result of an international collaboration of forty scholars, provides a comprehensive resource on Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in their Chinese, Korean, and Japanese contexts from the first few centuries of the common era right up to the present.