Panel I: Remembering Steven Collins

Wendy Doniger
Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of the History of Religions
Chair

Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies, Harvard University
On Spinoza
Janet Gyatso Presentation mp3

Matthew Kapstein, Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies, University of Chicago
Imagination as a Category in the Analysis of Culture
Matthew Kapstein Presentation mp3

Patrick Olivelle, Professor Emeritus, University of Texas
On Textual Criticism
Patrick Olivelle Presentation mp3

Keynote

Whitney Cox, Associate Professor and Chair of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
Opening Remarks
Whitney Cox Welcome mp3

Daniel Arnold, Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religions, University of Chicago
Introduction
Daniel Arnold Introduction mp3

Charles Hallisey, Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures, Harvard University
Charles Hallisey Keynote mp3

 Friday, November 16

Panel II

Christian Wedemeyer, Associate Professor of the History of Religions, University of Chicago
Chair

Andrew Rotman, Professor of Religion, Buddhist Studies, and South Asian Studies, Smith College
Andrew Rotman Presentation mp3
Life Lessons from the Hungry Ghost Realm: The Malignancy of Meanness in the Avadānaśat
The ten hungry ghost stories in the Avadānaśataka (One Hundred Stories) present an elaborate pathology of mātsarya (meanness): the logic of its development, the actions it engenders, the suffering it induces, and the ways it can be eradicated. All this is of the utmost importance, according to the text, for the karmic consequence of cultivating mātsarya is rebirth as a hungry ghost, and the result of engaging in the nefarious activities that mātsarya inspires is a unique set of excruciating scatological torments. So how does one master meannness?

Sonam Kachru, Assistant Professor, University of Virginia
Sonam Kachru Presentation mp3
Making Sense Of the Sense in Endings
Steven Collins has argued that nibbana in Pali Buddhist texts has the function of providing closure in systematic and narrative thought, providing, moreover, what Frank Kermode called “the sense of an ending” to time, be it lived time or narrative time. Setting aside whether or not this is a true or even helpful characterization, I ask: Were these ways of putting things ever *available* to Buddhist philosophers in any language in South Asia to say on behalf of nibbana / nirvana? I shall argue that they were. It is also interesting that while we do find explicit reference to claims in the close neighborhood of Collins’ thesis, our best evidence for such claims derives from philosophers, texts, and genres that, while drawing close to Collins in their assessment of the function of nirvana / nibbana, are nevertheless resistant to treating any sense thus provided as indicative of ultimate felicity.

Daniel Veidlinger, Professor in the Department of Comparative Religion, California State University, Chico
Daniel Veidlinger Presentation mp3
On the Very Idea of an Idea: Reflections on the role of Ideas in Cultural History
This talk will evaluate Steven Collins’ novel and sophisticated analysis of how ideas influence lived reality over time in light of new developments in the study of cultural evolution. Collins’ writings on this topic have implications far beyond Buddhist studies, as he provides a particularly well developed thesis on the interplay between thought, imagery and culture that can help flesh out evolutionary models of cultural development that are being worked on by scholars from more quantitatively oriented fields.

Panel III

Ben Schonthal, Associate Professor of Buddhism/Asian Religions and Associate Dean (International) Humanities, University of Otago
Chair

Christoph Emmrich, Associate Professor of South and Southeast Asian Buddhism, University of Toronto
Christoph Emmrich Presentation mp3
Time and Again and To Be Continued: an Unfinished Conversation with Steven Collins That Never Happened
Unbeknownst to Steven Collins, a young doctoral student writes a thesis in German in which he happens to disagree with the scholar. Time passes. Then Steven Collins reads an English version of the thesis. When they next meet, they do not talk about it, but begin to really like each other. Again time passes, the former doctoral student sends Steven Collins the first part of an article he is writing that revisits their old texts as well as their disagreements, and, depending on which sources one may trust, suggests possible solutions or simply changes the topic. They decide to talk about it when they meet next. Again time passes. Not much time, however, this time. But then, all of a sudden, it is too late for them to ever meet again. The conversation that never happened may have, again depending on the source, revolved around either the relation between linear and cyclical time or the question of why time, more often than not, tends to get divided into two. This talk is about trying to picture that conversation.

Juliane Schober, Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Center for Asian Research, Arizona State University
Juliane Schober Presentation mp3
Technologies of Communication in Theravada Buddhist Civilizations:  Mediating the Pali Imaginaire in Manuscript, Print and Digital Cultures
As the Robert H. N. Ho Foundation Visiting Professor in Buddhist Studies at Arizona State University in 2016, Stephen Collins delivered four lectures on Theravada Civilization and the practice of self. Taking my point of departure from these lectures, I seek to extend his thoughts on the circulation of Theravada civilizations and the Pali Imaginaire through a focus on technologies of communication. Specifically, I focus on the ways in which manuscript, print and digital media construct specific Theravada formations.

Anne Blackburn, Professor of South Asia Studies and Buddhist Studies, Cornell University
Anne Blackburn Presentation mp3
Pāli Up-River: Thinking with Steve Collins about the Work of Pāli in Tai Territories
In conversation with seminal ideas of Steve Collins, this paper explores case studies from Tai territories during the early 2nd millennium A.D., a period in which these locations began to participate more extensively in the Pāli world.