Bryan Lowe

Email reading “Dear Bryan, Thanks so much for doing this. You are unquestionably the most fastidious author I’ve copy edited. I’m humbled that you noticed the stray quotation mark.”

Want this on my tombstone.

How Buddhism Spread in Japan, 650-850 Between the late seventh and early ninth centuries, Japan changed from a land largely without Buddhism to a country where Buddhist ideas, images, and practices were everywhere. The introduction of …

My new book is coming out in August 2026.
uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/how-bu...

Forms & Function: The Splendors of Global Book Making Highlighting the diversity of global book making traditions using examples from the Princeton University Library, this exhibition focuses on the continuous transmission and exchange of formal aspects ...

Hardly on here anymore, but if anyone is near Princeton and interested in book history, you MUST check out the absolutely amazing new exhibition Forms & Function: The Splendors of Global Book Making curated by Martin Heijdra at Firestone Library through 12/7 📖📜 library.princeton.edu/formsandfunc...

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...

🏹🏹🏹

Slightly late #ManuscriptMonday. Illustrated Tales of Heike, 17th century, Princeton University Library.
dpul.princeton.edu/eastasian/ca...

New issue of the Journal of Japanese Studies is out! Highlights include articles on kanpu masatsu, war photography, empire paranoia, Italian-Japanese children's lit, Seidensticker’s style, and a bonus piece on Black Rain and ritual. Don’t miss it!

The tragedy - and true horror - of many witch trials was that the impersonal machinery of the law took them inexorably forward, even if judges and lawyers (and even the public at large) were unconvinced. But the image popular media presents us with is one of mounting hysteria (cf. Miller’s Crucible)

A simple idea: faculty should be represented in the search for UVa’s next president: www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025...

Congrats!

a man wearing a suit and tie looks at the camera ALT: a man wearing a suit and tie looks at the camera

Academics late?

The Japanese Journal of Religious Studies @jjrs-nirc.bsky.social ✨50th anniv issue✨ abt past, present, & future of 🇯🇵 religious studies is out!

🙏Paul Swanson, Hayashi Makoto, Kawahashi Noriko, Keller Kimbrough, Emi Foulk Bushelle, @orionklautau.bsky.social @jolyonbt.bsky.social @aikerots.bsky.social

Our Department is hiring in early Christianity. It's an assistant professor (tenure-track position). Spread the word! puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

Flyer from temple emphasizing syncretism

Kindle book image describing obliteration of Buddhism at Usa

Kindle book image describing obliteration of Buddhism at Usa

Fascinating to see Usa today market itself as the birthplace of Shinto-Buddhist syncretism, a very different view from that in Grapard, who describes an obliteration of syncretism in the wake of Meiji ideologues and their reforms.

For the first time since the Princeton Geniza Project began in 1986, we have published our metadata collated from over 30,000 Geniza documents and the People, Places, and histories of the Middle East and premodern Jewish communities found therein!

zenodo.org/records/1583...

🐓🔥😈
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...

Is there a collective noun for popes? 😉
#ManuscriptMonday
BL Cotton MS Nero D VII; The Benefactors' Book of St Albans Abbey (‘the Golden Book of St Albans’); 1380-c 1540; England (St Albans)

A manuscript page with Latin writing at the top and an illustration of a bearded person killing a horse with an axe, a pot suspended over a fire, and five bearded people eating strips of meat underneath. From Topographia Hibernica by Giraldus Cambrensis (British Library Royal MS 13 B. VIII f. 28v; reproduced under Creative Commons licence CC0 1.0).

A 13th-century-AD depiction of the 'pagan' Irish kingship ceremony, by priest and historian Gerald of Wales. He claimed the king bathed in the blood of a mare before sharing the meat with his courtiers 1/2

#ManuscriptMonday #MedievalMonday #Archaeology 🏺

📷 @britishlibrary.bsky.social / CC0 1.0

Shared for #ManuscriptMonday

Shared for #ManuscriptMonday

Of course, the original is even more amazing and you can see that on eMuseum: emuseum.nich.go.jp/detail?langI...

Picture of Japanese text with women in hell illustrated on either side.

Box of hell scroll next to a/c remote

This week's #ManuscriptMonday is this cool miniature replica of the illustrated hell scrolls that I bought at the Kyoto National Museum last week (next to an air conditioner remote for scale). You can get your own copy here for less than 6,000 yen! www.kyotobenrido.com/view/item/00...

If I'm ever missing Shosoin news reports that involve dragons and animal carcasses, I'm either dead already or it's time for me to retire. Either way, probably good to send someone to check on me.

Bruh, bsky.app/profile/brya...

New journal issue edited by Sujung Kim focusing on Buddhist talismans: ijbtc.dongguk.edu

So, if humanities produce good job outcomes, humanities have a secure ROI that bring in more than they cost, and STEM now has an even lower ROI due to grant cuts…. shouldn’t we invest more in humanities where less $$ goes a longer way? Apparently not. We should ask why not. /9

Thumbnails of manuscripts images of the Keio university collection of Medieval Western Manuscripts! Including fragments of Aristotelica and Dutch books of hours.

Western Medieval Manuscripts (and fragments) @keiouniversity.bsky.social (Japan)! Enjoy a few spare minutes and browse this remarkable collection! Something for everyone's taste and interest!
dcollections.lib.keio.ac.jp/en/western-m...

Buddhist statue carrying a monk

Exhibition poster

Sometimes, when things get tough, you just need a Buddhist statue to come to life and give you a piggyback ride.

Shakadō Engi, 16th c. Currently on display at the Kyoto National Museum and well worth it!
www.kyohaku.go.jp/jp/exhibitio...

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

UChicago Arts & Humanities Division to Restructure Amid “Historic Funding Pressures” “The status quo is not an option,” Deborah Nelson, dean of the Division of the Arts & Humanities, wrote to division faculty on June 18.

chicagomaroon.com/48215/news/u...

5 copies of 'The Illustrated Cairo Genizah', by Nick Posegay and Melonie Schmierer-Lee, stacked on a light brown tabletop. The books' spines are facing the camera. The book is large and the covers are dark red, with the title and authors' names in white. The cover also has a grid of 21 square images each cut out from a different medieval manuscript.

Good news if you like history, manuscripts, or nice books! 'The Illustrated Cairo Genizah' is now available at *greatly* reduced shipping costs via @theul.bsky.social (UK) and Amazon (worldwide) from this link: linktr.ee/nposegay. There's also a free sample file there with the entire first chapter.