Events

This workshop is organised by the Asia Research Institute, and co-sponsored by the Religion Cluster at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore.


The presence and importance of orders, as corporate structures of ritual and interpretive religious specialists, has long been noted in the history of South and Southeast Asia. Most often, however, these discussions have been compartmentalized within fields of study focused on a single religious tradition. This workshop seeks to open new lines of conversation by bringing together scholars working on Buddhist monastic lineages, Sufi tariqas, and Christian orders in Southern Asia, to bring their own specialized research into conversation with recent developments in the broader field of trans-regional history. The workshop seeks to understand better the motivations for extending religious communities geographically in the southern Asian region, as well as conceptions of affiliation that have shaped the movement and localization of religious specialists.  The workshop will also explore the ways in which the presence of religious orders shaped processes of recognition and competition within and across the expansionary religious traditions of Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity.

CONTACT DETAILS

Workshop Convenors

Assoc Prof Michael Feener (arifm@nus.edu.sg)
Cluster Leader, Religion and Globalisation in Asian Contexts, Asia Research Institute
& Department of History, National University of Singapore

Prof Anne M. Blackburn (amb242@cornell.edu)
Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
Professor, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University, USA

Secretariat

Ms Valerie Yeo
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
469A Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259770
Email: valerie.yeo@nus.edu.sg
Tel: (65) 6516 5279; Fax: (65) 6779 1428