Key Chinese Terms for the Study of Religion: An Experiment in De-Centering Disciplinary Discourse

This institute seeks to reimagine the critical vocabulary of religious studies through the use of Chinese concepts, as a way of decentering and decolonizing the study of religion. Through a multifaceted exploration of seminal Chinese terms (such as jiao 教, shen神, and fa 法), how they were used in different contexts, and how they might provide new ways of understanding non-Chinese phenomena, this institute will model an approach to theorizing religion from an Asian perspective. It builds on a workshop held at the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong, and is co-sponsored by the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation (CCKF).