Jeffrey Kotyk (Ph.D., Leiden University, 2017) is presently the Sheng Yen Education Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Chinese Buddhism at the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
摘要
Megan Bryson in Goddess on the Frontier: Religion, Ethnicity, and Gender in Southwest China explains and examines the various myths and roles of a goddess named Baijie. This is an original study on an overlooked figure from an understudied region of Asia. Such an undertaking is welcome, since it adds new knowledge and encourages further consideration of a region that is generally underappreciated in modern scholarship. Bryson’s study contributes to a larger concern in scholarship regarding gender, particularly in connection to Religious Studies. The topic of this book is unique and presents a number of challenges, primarily with regard to the acquisition and analysis of primary sources. Additionally, fieldwork was carried out that allowed for a discussion of Baijie in present times. Some of the theoretical considerations of this monograph, however, require further consideration in my opinion, as I will discuss below.
