Jim Hargett: How and Why Did Mount Emei Become a Famous Buddhist Mountain?
Tuesday January 6th, 2009. 7pm (refreshments), 7.30pm (talk)
Figaro Coffee Shop, 2nd floor. 160 Xingye Road, Xintiandi
We are honoured to have Jim Hargett, Professor of Chinese at the University at Albany, State University of New York, present our January lecture. His talk will focus on how and why certain mountains in China become “famous mountains” (how and why these mountains acquire religious associations); and how Mount Emei in Sichuan became a “famous Buddhist mountain.”
Jim Hargett was born in New York and spent his formative years growing up outside of Gaoxiong in southern Taiwan, where his father worked as a road engineer. After earning his bachelor’s degree at the University of Bridgeport (Connecticut), he then attended Indiana University, where he earned masters and doctorate degrees in Chinese. He is now Professor of Chinese in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University at Albany-SUNY. Jim spent the 2002-03 academic year in Shanghai on a Fulbright Fellowship. His research and writing that year resulted in the publication of the book Stairway to Heaven: A Journey to the Summit of Mount Emei (SUNY Press, 2006). Earlier this year his Riding the River Home: A Complete and Annotated Translation of Fan Chengda’s (1126-1193) Diary of a Boat Trip to Wu was published by the Chinese University Press in Hong Kong. Jim’s annotated English translation of Fan Chengda’s twelfth-century miscellany on Guangxi and Hainan, Treatises of the Supervisor and Guardian of the Cinnamon Sea, will be published by the University of Washington Press in 2009.
ENTRANCE: Rmb 30 for RAS members and Rmb 80 for non-members.