Author Affiliation: University of California Santa Barbara, USA
摘要
WHO would have thought a year before the 2020 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) that the Presidential Address would be delivered via Zoom? Indeed, how many of us even knew what Zoom was back then. Yet, here we are, in a world racked by a pandemic that has taken millions of lives worldwide, over proportionately from the most vulnerable sectors of society. It would not be right to begin this presidential address without acknowledging our present historical moment and the human suffering—the loss of life, health, livelihoods, and the trauma—that so many people have experienced as a result of the COVID pandemic. This is the context of this address.
Although these few lines hardly do justice to the complexity of our present moment, they do highlight the need to reflect on the role that historical context plays in our work as scholars. The need for greater self-reflection is, of course, central to the 2020 presidential theme, “AAR as a Scholarly Guild.” My address explores a narrower question within that broader rubric: the development of the academic study of Buddhism in North America and its relationship to the AAR.
