The conference will bring together twenty-five scholars from Canada, the US, China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Vietnam in order to engage in an interdisciplinary and comparative study of Buddhist statecraft, which will include historians, anthropologists, textual scholars, and art historians. Through the medium of storytelling, the paper presenters will explore how Buddhism has been an important means of securing imperial legitimation and political power, as well as an effective partner in the running of a state, since its arrival in China in the third century of the Common Era and subsequent spread to the rest of East Asia. As such, the conference will also illuminate the role that Chinese culture has played in the development of East Asian political and religious systems in general.
Co-Sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies, The Chiang-ching Kuo Foundation, The USC School of Religion, The USC Center for International Studies, the USC Korean Institute, the East Asia Studies Center, the USC Office of the Provost