Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Kenneth Dean, Asia Research Institute, and Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

A large amount of religious literature was circulated in late imperial and modern China (1600-1950), providing educated readers with a variegated toolkit of ritual and spiritual techniques aimed at dealing with both immediate and salvational concerns. A good part of these texts were instructions from the gods, revealed through spirit-writing. Much of this literature tells about withstanding disasters, at various levels, from individual illness and physical danger, to social breakdown and imminent apocalypse. It offers ways to ensure one’s survival: maintaining mental and physical health, guarding against vengeful ghosts and demons, begetting healthy sons, performing a good death, and securing one’s apotheosis among the gods. The lecture will first introduce a database of Chinese religious literature (www.crta.info) that aims to map this literature. It will then explore the spiritual exercises proposed by the gods to their living disciples to show how educated Chinese used them to develop their own self-cultivation regimen. It will show that these regimen were often included the performance of Daoist rituals.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Vincent Goossaert was a research fellow at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) from 1998-2012 and is now Professor of Daoism and Chinese Religions at École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) – PSL; he has served as Dean of its graduate school from 2014-2018. He has been Visiting Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Geneva University, and Renmin University. His research deals with the social history of Chinese religion in late imperial and modern times. He is the co-editor of T’oung Pao, a leading journal in sinology established in 1890. His recent publications include Making the Gods Speak: The Ritual Production of Revelation in Chinese History (Cambridge, Harvard University Asia Center, forthcoming), Heavenly Masters: Two Thousand Years of the Daoist State (Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press and Hong Kong, Chinese University Press, 2021), Vies des saints Exorcistes: Hagiographies Taoïstes, 11^e-16^e Siècles (Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2021), The Fifty Years that Changed Chinese Religion, 1898-1948 (with Paul R. Katz, Ann Arbor, AAS, 2021), Daoism in Modern China: Clerics and Temples in Urban Transformations, 1860-Present (with Liu Xun (eds.), London, Routledge, 2021), Local Religion in the Jiangnan Region (with Paul R. Katz, Minsu Quyi 民俗曲藝, 204, June 2019), and Making Saints in Modern China (with David Ownby and Ji Zhe (eds.), New York, Oxford University Press, 2017).

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this webinar has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the webinar.