Presented by Professor James Shields of Bucknell University, this 4-part lecture series draws on his recent research on Buddhist figures and movements who attempted in various ways to align Buddhist ideas and practices and secular progressive and radical politics. Although there is a chronological (and, to some extent, genealogical) thread to the lectures, each stands on its own as an introduction and discussion of the history as well as the ideas and activities of a particular figure or movement of “radical Buddhists” in the formative and tumultuous decades between the 1868 Meiji Restoration and the beginning of the Pacific War. The series investigates the problems as well as the possibilities of progressive and radical Buddhism in the context of Japanese and Western modernity.

Lecture Recordings: Click to watch now