Nicholas Witkowski

Mid-Autumn, Tiger Hill, Late Ming "Everyone was perfectly silent, even the mosquitoes."

For the Mid-Autumn Festival, I translated the 17th century failson, epicure, and memoirist Zhang Dai's account of the annual Mid-Autumn singing competition on Tiger Hill in Suzhou. www.burninghou.se/p/mid-autumn...

Webinar beginning now!

REMINDER: Oct 3, my ONLINE Khyentse Lecture at Northwestern:

“Comparative Subalternities” as a New Framework for the Study of Indian Buddhist Traditions: Locating the Outcaste Monastic within Plantation Geographies

8:30PM IST/8AM PDT/10AM CT/4PM GMT/5PM CET
LINK: northwestern.zoom.us/j/97705400388

Oct 3, Nicholas Witkowski @nwitkowski.bsky.social
“Comparative Subalternities” as a New Framework for the Study of Indian Buddhist Traditions: Locating the Outcaste Monastic within Plantation Geographies

9:30PM IST/9AM PDT/11AM CT/5PM GMT/6PM CET

LINK: northwestern.zoom.us/j/9140886463...

Dear friends and colleagues, I'm trying to compile a list of upcoming events on South Asian religions that will be live-streamed for students in my S. Asian religions class this quarter. If you are speaking somewhere or know of relevant events please drop a link below! Cheers! :D

Everyone in academia should read this piece about our dear, brilliant colleague @durba.bsky.social

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

My book, The Future That Was, is about the extraordinary rise of global research on women.

It also about the attacks on & starvation of gender research today by universities who leave only the shell intact, dismantling entire fields of knowledge built by women

press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

#PhilosophyJobs #Philosophy
Richard Charles and Esther Yewpick Lee Chair in Chinese Thought and Culture (deadline: October 7, 2025): jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

SEPT 15 JOB DEADLINE: Assistant Professor in South/Southeast Asian Religions (w/ focus on Hindu Traditions, defined BROADLY) in my department at the University of San Diego (PLEASE SHARE WIDELY).

jobs.sandiego.edu/cw/en-us/job...

Book cover. The background in sepia tones Showa man dictating to scribes. A cream box in the center has light brown writing that contains the title (Writing, Enslavement, and Power in the Roman Mediterranean) and the words "Edited by Jeremiah Coogan, Candid R. Moss, and Jospeh A. Howley.

Excited to announce that after a lot of editorial work our volume "Writing, Enslavement, and Power in the Roman Mediterranean, 100 BCE - 300 CE" is out now. @jeremiahcoogan.bsky.social @illdottore.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/book/60683

Help me find a wonderful new colleague for our department! Specialty in religions of South Asia or Southeast Asia. #religiousStudies #tenuretrackjobs jobs.sandiego.edu/cw/en-us/job...

I wish I could be there!

SEPT 15 JOB DEADLINE: Assistant Professor in South/Southeast Asian Religions (w/ focus on Hindu Traditions, defined BROADLY) in my department at the University of San Diego (PLEASE SHARE WIDELY).

jobs.sandiego.edu/cw/en-us/job...

Wonderful to hear that @rhcraig.bsky.social will be @upennrels.bsky.social as well - I'm sure your in for a powerfully uplifting lecture!

Dr. Ralph Craig III, "Preachers and Inspired Eloquence in Mahāyāna Buddhist Sūtras" - Learn | Explore | Connect September 11, 2025 @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm - “Inspired eloquence” the foremost skill in the Mahāyāna Buddhist preacher’s rhetorical toolkit.

Sept 11 - Friends in Buddhist Studies and beyond - @rhcraig.bsky.social will be speaking at the Ho Center at @utoronto.ca on Dharma preachers of the Indian Buddhist Mahāyāna and the Dharma preacher Tina Turner!

buddhiststudies.utoronto.ca/events/inspi...

Fight Cuts, Defend Higher Education at the University of Oregon The University of Oregon is planning to lay off an undisclosed number of faculty—including many tenured faculty—and to close units based on a projected budget deficit that was discovered late spring t...

University of Oregon is planning to close dept and lay off faculty—incl many *tenured* faculty—& among those impacted are Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, and Holocaust Studies. Here is a link to a petition asking the president to reconsider actionnetwork.org/petitions/fi...

U Chicago "has undertaken extraordinary quantities of leveraged spending in ways that benefit select units, while others, who have achieved high international ranking with little aid, have instead suffered from a withdrawal of operational in order to finance those endeavors"

JOB: Assistant Professor in South/Southeast Asian Religions (w/ focus on Hindu Traditions, defined BROADLY) in my department at the University of San Diego (PLEASE SHARE WIDELY).

Apply here: jobs.sandiego.edu/cw/en-us/job...

Qualities of Distinction: A New Perspective on the dhutaṅgas in the Pāli Canon This essay explores the so-called dhutaṅgas (or dhutaguṇas), which are commonly understood as a group of optional ascetic practices for Buddhist monastics. Richard Gombrich expresses a widely accepted...

Friends in #BuddhistStudies, do read Oliver Freiberger's fabulous new piece, "Qualities of Distinction," here, the author argues that we need to seriously reconsider what practices were foundational to early Indian Buddhism.

Free for download here: www.academia.edu/143337761/Qu...

Qualities of Distinction: A New Perspective on the dhutaṅgas in the Pāli Canon This essay explores the so-called dhutaṅgas (or dhutaguṇas), which are commonly understood as a group of optional ascetic practices for Buddhist monastics. Richard Gombrich expresses a widely accepted...

Friends in #BuddhistStudies, do read Oliver Freiberger's fabulous new piece, "Qualities of Distinction," here, the author argues that we need to seriously reconsider what practices were foundational to early Indian Buddhism.

Free for download here: www.academia.edu/143337761/Qu...

According to the American Historical Association @historians.org, "Banning generative AI is not a long-term solution; cultivating AI literacy is."

You can download the report here in which they explain all the ways they claim that AI can be useful in the classroom.

The front cover of Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration by Matthew Larsen and Mark Letteney.

If the authors (including @letteney.bsky.social) are right about the pervasiveness of incarceration in the ancient Mediterranean world, then this book will require a paradigm shift in how we think about coercion and social control in antiquity.

Not often that the historiographic stakes are so high!

Some more teasers for After Transformation, and a discount code for 30% off if you pre-order through Duke UP. The code is: E25KTRST

See here: dukeupress.edu/after-transf...

#classicsbluesky #byzantinebluesky #ancientbluesky

I’m behind on all of my planned reading these last couple of months, but I’ve taken peeks at the three of these because I just can’t wait. Mandatory reading, all of them.

Fabulous Fall Buddhist Studies Lecture Series line up presented by the National University of Singapore Buddhist Studies Group!

Image of Book Cover featuring calligraphy of Hongyi

Thrilled to announce a new volume I've co-edited with Benjamin Brose: Inner Worlds: Individuals and Interiority in Chinese Religious Life. It’s out now from Brill and you can find it here: brill.com/edcollbook/t... ✨ #NewBooks #ReligiousStudies #BuddhistStudies

This piece may be of interest to @karwaanheritage.bsky.social, @journalslavery.bsky.social, @thecjbs.bsky.social, @southasiainstitute.bsky.social, @himalmag.bsky.social, @buddhismnow.bsky.social, @istb-univienna.bsky.social, @buddhistdoor.bsky.social, @willdalrymple.bsky.social

Rethinking “Brahmanization” and Caste Politics in Late Ancient South Asia: A Study of Outcaste Buddhist Subalternity

Now downloadable w/o paywall @dukepress.bsky.social in #CSSAAME: my most recent study which attempts to answer the question,

What does it mean to talk about #Buddhism as a #subaltern religion?

tinyurl.com/2zu4pe4m

Working on humanistic approaches to premodern Japanese law? Apply to come see us at UCLA! ⬇️ Share widely with colleagues around the world! Presentations can be in either English or Japanese.