Faculty of Liberal Arts
Associate Professor
History of Japanese religion, religion and the body
B.A., M.A., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Email: e-drott-5mc[at]sophia.ac.jp
Office: 10-653
My research explores the role of the body in religion and the role of religious ideology and practice in producing knowledge about the body. My recent publications have examined the ways in which religious ideas and practices helped shape perceptions of old age in early and medieval Japan. I have also published on the intersections of religious and medical knowledge in premodern Japan. I teach courses on the history of Buddhism, Japanese religions, and religion and the body.
Books
・Buddhism and the Transformation of Old Age in Medieval Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2016.
Book Chapters
・“Overcoming Illness with Insight: Kokan Shiren’s Treatise on the Nature of Illness and Its Manifestations” In Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources. Ed. C. Pierce Salguero. Columbia University Press, 2017: 61-83.
・“Bukkyō igaku to jukyō igaku no kiro de: Manase Dōsan no Rōjinmon” (「仏教医学」と「儒教医学」の 岐路でー曲直瀬道三の『老人門』 “At the Crossroad of “Buddhist medicine” and “Confucian medicine”: Manase Dōsan’s Rōjinmon”). In Manase Dōsan to Kinsei nihon iryō shakai (Manase Dōsan and Early Modern Japanese Medical Society). Ed. Takeda kagaku shinko zaidan Kyō’ō sho’oku ed. Osaka: Takeda kagaku shinko zaidan, 2015: 272-293.
Articles
・“Aging Bodies, Minds and Selves: Representations of Senile Dementia in Japanese Film.” Journal of Aging Studies, Volume 47 (December 2018): 10-23.
・“To Tread on High Clouds’: Dreams of Eternal Youth in Early Japan.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Volume 42, no. 2 (Fall 2015): 275–317.
・“Care Must be Taken’: Defilement, Disgust and the Aged Body in Early Japan.” Journal of Religion in Japan, Volume 4, no. 1 (2015): 1-31.
・“Aging in Medieval Japanese Buddhism.” Religion Compass, Volume 9, Issue 1 (2015): 1-12.
・“Gods, Buddhas, and Organs: Buddhist Physicians and Theories of Longevity in Early Medieval Japan.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Volume 37, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 247-273.
Faculty of Liberal Arts
Graduate Program in Global Studies