Professor Yoko Arisaka (Chair, Buddhism in Japan Panel)
Yoko Arisaka (assistant professor) has been teaching at the University of San Francisco since 1996. She was born in Kamakura, Japan, and moved to the United States in 1982. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from University of California at Riverside in 1996. During Fall ‘97 she was a CNRS research associate at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Her field of research and interest include modern Japanese philosophy, Chinese philosophy, 19th and 20th Century European philosophy (emphasis in phenomenology), philosophy of consciousness, ethics, philosophy of technology, feminism, and political philosophy. She also teaches in the Master's Program at the Center for the Pacific Rim at the University of San Francisco. She is a co-editor of Nishida and the Question of Modernity (forthcoming) and is currently working on her book, Philosophy and Imperialism: Asian Modernism in Prewar Japan. Return to previous page.
Professor Catherine M. Bell (Keynote Speaker)
Dr. Bell is Bernard J. Hanley Professor and Chair of the Religious Studies Department at Santa Clara University, as well as Director of the Asian Studies Program. A specialist in Chinese religious practices and religious tracts, her two books on ritual, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (1991) and Ritual (1998), remain seminal contributions to an interdisciplinary study of ritual in contemporary society. In addition to her scholarly accomplishments, she serves on the editorial boards of the following academic journals: Religion, Journal of Chinese Religions, Journal of Ritual Studies and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Return to previous page.
Professor Emeritus Delmer M. Brown (Shinto Panel)
Professor Brown is one of the leading figures in the field of early Japanese religious history. He twice served as Chairman of the History department during his thirty years at U.C. Berkeley. After retirement, he has been active as a member of the Fulbright Commission, as a member of the Board of Directors for the Japan-American Society in Tokyo, as Director for the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo (1977-1987), and was awarded by the Emperor one of the Japanese Government’s highest honors, the Order of the Sacred Treasure (1997.) Among his numerous publications are Nationalism in Japan, Studies in Shinto Thought, The Future and the Past: a Translation of the Gukansho, and as editor and contributor for The Cambridge History of Japan: Volume 1. He is currently working on digitizing classical Japanese texts for internet use. Return to previous page.
Professor Steven D. Goodman (Tibetan Buddhism Panel)
Dr. Goodman is Co-Director, and Core Faculty in Asian and Comparative Studies, California Institute of Integral Studies (San Francisco). He received his doctorate in Far Eastern Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, where he specialized in Tibetan Buddhist philosphical thought. He co-edited Tibetan Buddhism: Reason and Revelation (SUNY Press, 1992), was a Rockefeller Fellow at the Rice University Center for Cultural Studies (1994), and Visiting Faculty in Religious Studies at Rice University (1995). For the past 25 years he has lectured on Buddhist thought in comparative perspective, and frequently conducts cultural tours of Nepal and Bhutan. Return to previous page.
Professor Christopher Ives (Japanese Buddhism Panel)
Chris Ives is Professor of Religion and chair of the Department of Religion at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. In his scholarship he explores Buddhist ethics and modern Zen thought in the context of Japanese intellectual and political history. His major publications include Zen Awakening and Society (1992) and The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation (co-edited with John B. Cobb, Jr.; 1990). Return to previous page.
Professor Richard Madsen (Christianity in China Panel)
Dr. Madsen is professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego. His research is in the comparative sociology of culture. He has authored or coauthored four books on China: Chen Village (with Anita Chan and Jonathan Unger), Morality and Power in a Chinese Village, and Unofficial China (with Perry Link and Paul Pickowicz); and The World of God: The Catholic and Civil Society in China. He is a co-author (with Robert Bellah, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven Tipton) of Habits of the Heart, and The Good Society. Most recently, he is author of China and the American Dream, a work on the cultural dimensions of the US-China relations. Return to previous page.
Professor John Nelson (Symposium chair, Shinto Panel)
Dr. Nelson is chair of the symposium and assistant professor of East Asian religions in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at USF. He is the author of two books on Shinto in contemporary Japan (A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine [1996], Enduring Identities: the Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan [2000]), numerous articles, and has produced two short documentary videos, "Japan's Rituals of Renewal" (1988) and "Japan's Rituals of Remembrance: 50 Years after the Pacific War" (1997). He has received extended research fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Japan Foundation. Dr. Nelson spent the fall of 1999 in Japan working on a film introducing Shinto, and researching the topic of spirit calming rituals in Buddhist, Shinto, and broadly East Asian contexts. Return to previous page.
Rinpoche Lama Kunga Thartse (Tibetan Buddhism Panel)
Lama Kunga was born into a noble family in Lhasa in 1935, the son of Tsipon Shuguba, Treasurer in the Dalai Lama's government. At the age of seven, he was recognized as a reincarnation of Sevan Repa, a heart disciple of Milarepa, Tibet’s great 11th century poet-saint. Rinpoche entered Ngor Monastery at eight and was ordained as a monk at sixteen. In 1959, he was Vice-Abbot of Ngor Monastery, in the Sakya Tradition, but fled Western Tibet with his countrymen at the time of Chinese invasion. In 1972 Rinpoche came to America and established Ewam Choden Tibetan Buddhist Center in Kensington, California. Lama Kunga has also taught in New Jersey, Washington, D.C., Wisconsin, Oregon, Florida, Utah, Minnesota, and Arkansas. Return to previous page.
Tenzin Tethong (Chair, Tibetan Buddhism Panel)
Tenzin Tethong is a former representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in New York and Washington, D.C. He was worked all his life with Tibetan exiles as a teacher, journalist and grassroots activist. He is the founder of key Tibet initiatives in the U.S. such as the Tibet Fund, Tibet House-New York, and the International Campaign for Tibet. He is currently Chairman of the Committee of 100 for Tibet, and involved in a wide range of Tibetan initiatives ranging from the Hear Tibet! an international campaign for a UN referendum in Tibet, to projects at the University of Virginia. He lives in Palo Alto, and is a visiting scholar at Stanford University where he teaches courses on Tibet in the History Department and the Continuing Studies Program. Return to previous page.
Rev. Yoshiharu Tomatsu (Buddhism Panel)
Rev. Yoshiharu Tomatsu is head priest at Shinko-in temple and research fellow at the Jodo Sho Research Institute of Buddhism, located within Tokyo’s largest temple, Zojo-ji. He is also Lecturer in religious studies at Taisho university in Tokyo. Rev. Tomatsu is the 50th generation of Buddhist priests in his family and was selected by the Research Institute for advanced study in the U.S., receiving a master’s degree in 1991 from Harvard. He has published on Japan’s aging population and on the relevance of traditional Buddhist rituals for contemporary Japanese society. Return to previous page.
Rev. Chisato Uesugi (Shinto panel)
Rev. Uesugi is Head Priest at Suwa Shrine in Nagasaki, Japan. A native of Nagano prefecture, he served in the Central Association of Shinto Shrines in Tokyo as section chief before taking over the most important shrine in Nagasaki. It is home to one Japan’s top five festivals: the Okunchi festival in September. He has promoted the protection and preservation of historic buildings in Nagasaki, has appeared in numerous television documentaries, and has written several books, the most recent of which is Shinto and the Way of Tea (1994). Return to previous page.
Professor Philip L. Wickeri (Christianity in China Panel)
Dr. Wickeri is Flora Lamson Hewlett Professor of Evangelism and Mission at the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo. His teaching and research revolves around two related areas: first, the development of a new theology of mission for the twenty-first century, focusing on the important issues for world Christianity, such as interfaith dialogue, the diversity of witness and the church's response to globalization. Second, Christianity and cultures in Asia, particularly China, in historical, theological and missiological perspective. Dr. Wickeri received his Ph.D. from the Princeton Theological Seminary. His most recent work is Christianity & Modernization: a Chinese debate (1995). Return to previous page.
Dr. Xiaoxin Wu (Chair, Christianity in China Panel)
Dr. Wu Xiaoxin is the Director of the Ricci Institute at the University of San Francisco. He received his Ed.D. in International and Multicultural Education from USF in 1993. A native of Beijing, Dr. Wu is also the Director of the Ricci 21st Century Roundtable project. In addition to his research work on the history of Christian higher education in China, he also has extensive experience in computer technology, multilingual computing, publishing, and Internet technology. In 2000, with Dr. Stephen Uhalley, Jr., Distinguished Fellow of the EDS-Stewart Chair at the Ricci Institute, he co-edited a book entitled China and Christianity: Burdened Past, Hopeful Future. Return to previous page.
