Position Faculty Role Director of Undergraduate Studies Title Associate Professor of Religion, Melanchton W. Jacobus University Preceptor Email [email protected] Office Hours Field of StudyAsian Religions CV Bryan D. Lowe CV Bio/Description Bryan Lowe joined Princeton’s Department of Religion in 2019. He specializes in Buddhism in ancient Japan (seventh through ninth centuries) and has broader research interests in ritual, manuscript studies, historiography, canons, and the religion of non-elites. Lowe’s first book, Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan, received the John Whitney Hall Book Prize from the Association of Asian Studies. He is currently working on a new book that combines manuscript and archaeological evidence to consider the role of preaching and ritual in the spread of Buddhism to the Japanese provinces. Lowe has received generous support for his research from an ACLS Robert H. N. Ho Foundation fellowship, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright IIE, Japan Foundation, the International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies (Tokyo), and others. He taught at Vanderbilt University from 2012–2019 prior to coming to Princeton.He also helps edit an online Guide to Shōsōin Research. Selected Publications “Protection without Punishment: Turning to Buddhist Gods during Covid-19.” Immanent Frame. “Roads, State, and Religion in Japanese Antiquity.” History of Religions 59, no. 4 (2020): 272–303.Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan. Honolulu: Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism (University of Hawai‘i Press), 2017.“States of ‘State Buddhism’: History, Religion, and Politics in Late Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Scholarship.” Japanese Religions 39/1&2 (2014): 71–93.“Contingent and Contested: Preliminary Remarks on Buddhist Catalogs and Canons in Early Japan.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 41/2 (2014): 221-253.“Buddhist Manuscript Culture in Pre-modern Japan.” Religion Compass 8/9 (2014): 287-301. “The Scripture on Saving and Protecting Body and Life: An Introduction and Translation.” Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies 27 (2014): 1-34.“The Discipline of Writing: Scribes and Purity in Eighth-century Japan.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 39/2 (2012): 201-239. “Texts and Textures of Early Japanese Buddhism: Female Patrons, Lay Scribes, and Buddhist Scripture in Eighth-Century Japan.” Princeton University Library Chronicle 73:1 (Autumn 2011): 9-36.“Japan I: c. 550–c. 850.” Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, edited by Jonathan Silk and Richard Bowring, 349–386. Leiden: Brill, 2023.
