Stephen Bokenkamp: Daoism and Buddhism in China

Stephen Bokenkamp talks about his fieldwork in China after the Cultural Revolution, how to better understand the original encounter between Daoism and Buddhism in the 2nd to 6th centuries C.E., and what Daoist and Buddhist Studies can learn from one another today.Stephen R. Bokenkamp (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 1986) specializes in the study of medieval Chinese Daoism, with a special emphasis on its literatures and its relations with Buddhism. He is author of Early Daoist Scriptures，Ancestors and Anxiety，A Fourth-century Daoist Family: the Zhen’gao, as well as over forty articles and book chapters on Daoism and literature. Among his awards are the Guggenheim Award for the Translation of a medieval Daoist text, a National Endowment for the Humanities Translation grant and the invitation to present the Xuyun and Yanfu lectures for the Philosophy Department of Beijing University. In addition to his position at Arizona State, he has taught at Indiana University, Stanford University, and short courses for graduate students at Beijing, Princeton and Fudan Universities. He was also part of the National 985 project at the Institute of Religious Studies, Sichuan University from 2006-2013.Interview by Miles Osgood.