Buddhist Nuns in India / U of T conference
The University of Toronto/McMaster University Yehan Numata Buddhist Studies Program is pleased to announce an international conference on the lives of ordained Buddhist nuns in India from the time of the Buddha until the eventual disappearance of the bhikṣuṇī saṅgha from Indian soil.
BUDDHIST NUNS IN INDIA
April 16-17, 2011, University of Toronto
Trinity College, Combination Room. 6 Hoskin Avenue, Toronto
Sponsored by the University of Toronto/McMaster University Yehan Numata Buddhist Studies Program
All conference sessions are free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Shayne Clarke: clarsha@mcmaster.ca
http://buddhiststudies.chass.utoronto.ca/buddhist-nuns-in-india/
PANELISTS INCLUDE:
Shayne Clarke (McMaster University) “Guṇaprabha, Yijing, Bu sTon and the Lack of a Coherent System of Rules for Nuns in the Tibetan Tradition of the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya”
Christoph Emmrich (University of Toronto, Mississauga) “And Then There Were None? Mrs. Shakya and the Sketchy History of the Nepalese Bhikṣuṇīs”
Ann Heirman (University of Gent) “Beyond Gender: Bodily Care in Indian Buddhist Monasticism”
Oskar von Hinüber (Universität Freiburg) “Pious and Useful: Women Who did Not Become Nuns in Early Buddhism”
Hiraoka Satoshi (Kyoto Bunkyō University) “Did Yaśodharā become a Nun? On the Indebtedness of the Lotus Sūtra to the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya”
Petra Kieffer-Pülz (Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle-Wittenberg) “Buddhist Nuns in South India as Reflected in the Andhakaṭṭhakathā and the Anugaṇṭhipada”
Jinah Kim (Vanderbilt University) “At the Feet of the Buddha: Representations of Buddhist Nuns and Monastic Women in Medieval South Asia”
Kishino Ryōji (University of California, Los Angeles) “On Possible Misunderstandings of the Brahmacaryopasthānasaṃvṛti Requirement for Female Ordination in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya”
Jason Neelis (Wilfrid Laurier University) “Female Ownership of Buddhist Monasteries? A Closer Look at Vihārasvāminīs and Feminine Patronage in South Asian Sources”
Sasaki Shizuka (Hanazono University) “An Analytical Study of the Bhikṣuṇī Pārājika rules in the Vinayas”
Gregory Schopen (University of California, Los Angeles) “The Buddhist Nun as an Urban Landlord and a ‘Legal Person’ in Early India”
Jampa Tsedroen (Universität Hamburg) “The Foundation of the Order of Buddhist Nuns According to the Tibetan Translation of the Kṣudrakavastu of the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya”
Yao Fumi (Tokyo University) “The Story of Dharmadinnā: Ordination by Messenger in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya”
Yonezawa Yoshiyasu (Taishō University) “Re-editing the Bhikṣuṇī-vibhaṅga Section of the Vinayasūtra”
Respondents: Kate Crosby (University of London), Paul Groner (University of Virginia), Shimoda Masahiro (Tokyo University)
BUDDHIST NUNS IN INDIA
April 16-17, 2011, University of Toronto
Trinity College, Combination Room. 6 Hoskin Avenue, Toronto
Sponsored by the University of Toronto/McMaster University Yehan Numata Buddhist Studies Program
All conference sessions are free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Shayne Clarke: clarsha@mcmaster.ca
http://buddhiststudies.chass.utoronto.ca/buddhist-nuns-in-india/
PANELISTS INCLUDE:
Shayne Clarke (McMaster University) “Guṇaprabha, Yijing, Bu sTon and the Lack of a Coherent System of Rules for Nuns in the Tibetan Tradition of the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya”
Christoph Emmrich (University of Toronto, Mississauga) “And Then There Were None? Mrs. Shakya and the Sketchy History of the Nepalese Bhikṣuṇīs”
Ann Heirman (University of Gent) “Beyond Gender: Bodily Care in Indian Buddhist Monasticism”
Oskar von Hinüber (Universität Freiburg) “Pious and Useful: Women Who did Not Become Nuns in Early Buddhism”
Hiraoka Satoshi (Kyoto Bunkyō University) “Did Yaśodharā become a Nun? On the Indebtedness of the Lotus Sūtra to the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya”
Petra Kieffer-Pülz (Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle-Wittenberg) “Buddhist Nuns in South India as Reflected in the Andhakaṭṭhakathā and the Anugaṇṭhipada”
Jinah Kim (Vanderbilt University) “At the Feet of the Buddha: Representations of Buddhist Nuns and Monastic Women in Medieval South Asia”
Kishino Ryōji (University of California, Los Angeles) “On Possible Misunderstandings of the Brahmacaryopasthānasaṃvṛti Requirement for Female Ordination in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya”
Jason Neelis (Wilfrid Laurier University) “Female Ownership of Buddhist Monasteries? A Closer Look at Vihārasvāminīs and Feminine Patronage in South Asian Sources”
Sasaki Shizuka (Hanazono University) “An Analytical Study of the Bhikṣuṇī Pārājika rules in the Vinayas”
Gregory Schopen (University of California, Los Angeles) “The Buddhist Nun as an Urban Landlord and a ‘Legal Person’ in Early India”
Jampa Tsedroen (Universität Hamburg) “The Foundation of the Order of Buddhist Nuns According to the Tibetan Translation of the Kṣudrakavastu of the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya”
Yao Fumi (Tokyo University) “The Story of Dharmadinnā: Ordination by Messenger in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya”
Yonezawa Yoshiyasu (Taishō University) “Re-editing the Bhikṣuṇī-vibhaṅga Section of the Vinayasūtra”
Respondents: Kate Crosby (University of London), Paul Groner (University of Virginia), Shimoda Masahiro (Tokyo University)
A letter to Patrick Deane, President, McMaster University
This is about the symposium upcoming at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, The Future of the Academic Library. The symposium is co-presented by Library Journal and McMaster.
It was announced on Twitter this past Sunday and there was a bit of a Twitter-storm about the conference as quite a few people (myself included) thought the program participants a bit problematic, to say the least.
But I'll let my University of Windsor colleague Mita Willliams take it from here. With her permission, I'm reposting the letter she wrote yesterday to President Deane.
I am writing this letter to you today on International Women's Day. Or, to be more accurate I'm writing you this letter *because* it's International Women's Day.
I am writing to ask you if you think that it's acceptable for a symposium that you will be a speaking at - The Future of Academic Libraries - to have what appears to be only 3 women presenting out of a possible 21 speakers.
The percentage of women in Canadian academic librarianship is 73% [CAUT Almanac, pdf].
Last night I got a call from a student from McMaster as part of the University's current Alumni fund-raising drive. She was kind, clear, engaging and polite. When I told her that I was able to apply my geography and environmental science degree from McMaster in my work as a science librarian, she told me that she really appreciated librarians and just recently a McMaster librarian helped her find the data she needed for her GIS class.
But as able as she was, she was not ultimately effective in getting closer to her fund-raising goal for reasons that were not her fault. So after I told the student my reasons why I would not donate to McMaster University, I told her that I would write you personally and tell you those reasons myself because... well because it only seemed fair.
I support McMaster librarians and the excellent work that they do. I'm looking forward to working with them at Code4Lib North (that McMaster University is kindly sponsoring) and I hope to run into them again at The Humanities and Technology Camp being held two weeks later at UWO. (As an aside, did you notice that there are no McMaster Librarians speaking at The Future of Academic libraries at the symposium? Others have.)
I will not be attending The Future of Academic Libraries Symposium because 15% doesn't sound fair to me. I want a future that's more fair than the present, for myself and for the student I spoke to last night.
Mita has it exactly right.
Consider me an additional signatory to Mita's letter.
Another thing that I find problematic is that most of the presenters from the library world are senior administrators -- university librarians and others at that level. While I have nothing against senior administrators per se, it seems to me that a symposium on the future of something could certainly benefit from some younger blood. See Peter Brantley's excellent call to arms, Get in the goddamn wagon, for some further thoughts in that direction.
A panel discussion featuring some of McMaster's front-line librarians would seem to be a natural for dealing with at least some of the aforementioned issues -- lack of women, lack of Mac librarians and lack of early-career and front-line librarians.
I realize that it's probably too late to change the program significantly, in particular since the schedule of events seems inordinately packed. However, I feel the three prominent omissions seriously damage the credibility of what should have been a significant event in the spring calendar for academic librarians in southern Ontario.
It was announced on Twitter this past Sunday and there was a bit of a Twitter-storm about the conference as quite a few people (myself included) thought the program participants a bit problematic, to say the least.
But I'll let my University of Windsor colleague Mita Willliams take it from here. With her permission, I'm reposting the letter she wrote yesterday to President Deane.
I am writing this letter to you today on International Women's Day. Or, to be more accurate I'm writing you this letter *because* it's International Women's Day.
I am writing to ask you if you think that it's acceptable for a symposium that you will be a speaking at - The Future of Academic Libraries - to have what appears to be only 3 women presenting out of a possible 21 speakers.
The percentage of women in Canadian academic librarianship is 73% [CAUT Almanac, pdf].
Last night I got a call from a student from McMaster as part of the University's current Alumni fund-raising drive. She was kind, clear, engaging and polite. When I told her that I was able to apply my geography and environmental science degree from McMaster in my work as a science librarian, she told me that she really appreciated librarians and just recently a McMaster librarian helped her find the data she needed for her GIS class.
But as able as she was, she was not ultimately effective in getting closer to her fund-raising goal for reasons that were not her fault. So after I told the student my reasons why I would not donate to McMaster University, I told her that I would write you personally and tell you those reasons myself because... well because it only seemed fair.
I support McMaster librarians and the excellent work that they do. I'm looking forward to working with them at Code4Lib North (that McMaster University is kindly sponsoring) and I hope to run into them again at The Humanities and Technology Camp being held two weeks later at UWO. (As an aside, did you notice that there are no McMaster Librarians speaking at The Future of Academic libraries at the symposium? Others have.)
I will not be attending The Future of Academic Libraries Symposium because 15% doesn't sound fair to me. I want a future that's more fair than the present, for myself and for the student I spoke to last night.
Mita has it exactly right.
Consider me an additional signatory to Mita's letter.
Another thing that I find problematic is that most of the presenters from the library world are senior administrators -- university librarians and others at that level. While I have nothing against senior administrators per se, it seems to me that a symposium on the future of something could certainly benefit from some younger blood. See Peter Brantley's excellent call to arms, Get in the goddamn wagon, for some further thoughts in that direction.
A panel discussion featuring some of McMaster's front-line librarians would seem to be a natural for dealing with at least some of the aforementioned issues -- lack of women, lack of Mac librarians and lack of early-career and front-line librarians.
I realize that it's probably too late to change the program significantly, in particular since the schedule of events seems inordinately packed. However, I feel the three prominent omissions seriously damage the credibility of what should have been a significant event in the spring calendar for academic librarians in southern Ontario.
Evan Rachel Wood Sports Pubic Wig in ‘Mildred Pierce’
Evan Rachel Wood spent months preparing for her role in the upcoming HBO mini-series ‘Mildred Pierce,’ working with dialect coaches and piano teachers. Foregoing her normal waxing routine, however, was apparently asking too much.
The young starlet, who plays Vampire Queen Sophie-Anne in the hit series True Blood, told Julie Zied of The Zeidgeist she was nervous about her nude scene in the final installment of the five-part depression-era series.
Although actually, she wasn’t fully nude in the frontal scene. On the advice of co-star Kate Winslet, she wore a merkin for authenticity sake. What’s a merkin, you ask?
“Let’s just say, I had to wear a wig because it was in the 30s, and everything had to look like it was in the 30s,” the 23-year old was kind enough to explain.
Unsurprisingly, such pubic hair pieces are readily available on the internet.
“Mildred Pierce” premieres Sunday, March 27 on HBO. In the meantime, Wood is busy filming The Ides of March, in which she stars alongside George Clooney, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Marisa Tomei. The drama, directed and co-writen by Clooney, is due to hit theaters this fall.
Triangle Fire: The Building Survives
The onetime Asch Building, whose top three floors were occupied by the Triangle Waist Company, is now the Brown Building of Science, where New York University students and scientists occupy laboratories devoted to biology and chemistry. The only hint of its role in one of America’s worst — and most indelible — industrial disasters can be found on two street-level bronze plaques on its facade, one put up by the National Register of Historic Places.
The ninth floor, where two out of three of the 146 died and from where about 50 people plunged to their deaths, is today N.Y.U.’s Center for Developmental Genetics, where researchers are studying such matters as the development of the double-chambered heart in sea squirts.
“We think that it’s fitting that where all these sad things happened, we’re studying the genes involved in illnesses like heart disease,” said Gloria M. Coruzzi, chairwoman of the department of biology, as she showed a visitor around.
The haunted floor, its contents and occupants consumed by the fire, has been gutted and renovated at least twice, and all that is left to offer a sense of what it looked like on March 25, 1911 are the tall windows and the round supporting columns.
Instead of rows of sewing machines, there are rooms and cubicles filled with test tubes, centrifuges and aquatic tanks. Instead of 250 seamstresses and cutters crowded on a floor, there are a handful of professors, postdoctoral fellows and researchers.
“Every now and then you think about it,” Karin Kiontke, a postdoctoral fellow in biology, said of the Triangle fire.
The gray stone 10-story building on the northwest corner of Washington Place and Greene Street was a skyscraper of its time. Built in 1910 in a neo-Renaissance style, it is decorated with such old-fashioned touches as terra cotta trim and fleurs-de-lis moldings.
Most of the nation’s dresses, blouses, hats, feather adornments and other ready-made clothing were then being produced in New York, and the industry employed over 80,000 people. To take advantage of the growing work force of immigrants who were settling in the nearby tenements of the Lower East Side and East Village, factory loft buildings rose east and south of Washington Square.
“All the buildings on Washington Place, on Washington Square East, on Third Street were garment factories,” said Michael Nash, head of N.Y.U.’s Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. “Most of these buildings date from 1890 to 1916.”
The factories erased much of what was a posh pocket of downtown Manhattan, with the Asch Building itself erected on the site of the town house where the writer Henry James was born in 1843, according to Joyce Gold, an adjunct professor of New York history at N.Y.U. who gives tours of the neighborhood.
Triangle, which moved into the Asch Building one year after it opened, was regarded as a model of clean efficiency compared with the sweatshops inside tenement apartments that had been commonplace, Mr. Nash said. Triangle’s building was fireproof, had freight elevators, tall ceilings and windows that flooded the lofts with daylight.
“Triangle had the reputation of being the most modern of all the factories,” he said.
As the garment industry followed the subway lines and department stores uptown, N.Y.U., which had its law school next door to Asch, began gobbling up the lofts, eventually usurping the footprint of the garment industry. The university acquired the Asch Building in 1929. Still, as recently as 15 years ago garments were produced in the neighborhood.
Today, students with ear buds and book bags, who dominate the neighborhood the way immigrant blouse, dress and hat workers once did, hurry by the building. Most are oblivious to its history.
“I know there were lives lost in that factory, that people had to jump,” said Dominique Williams, 19, an N.Y.U. sophomore smoking a cigarette near the building and listening to her iPod. “I think about it sometimes. I guess it’s like all of New York. It has a lot of history and you can’t really escape, and our place of learning is in that place.”
Parents angry at Providence school closings
PROVIDENCE — Parents wanted to know one thing Tuesday night: why are schools and teachers bearing the brunt of the city’s epic budget crisis?
“You ought to be ashamed of yourselves,” said Kayla Ashness, a parent of four. “How about you take a pay cut, Mr. Mayor and Mr. Superintendent. Why do we have to give up on our kids?”
Tuesday night’s public meeting, held at the Sanchez complex in South Providence, was the first of three such forums to provide residents with an opportunity to ask questions about the proposed closing of four school buildings in Providence, a move that will affect as many as eight schools. About 70 people attended. Mayor Angel Taveras announced last week that he wanted to close four elementary school buildings to help narrow a budget gap of close to $110 million.
But parents and teachers weren’t buying the mayor’s reasons for shutting down schools, a move that will affect an estimated 2,500 students, nor were they buying his rationale for sending termination notices to every teacher in the district.
“The whole truth is not being told,” said Chris Awsika. “Last year, we were told that Bridgham Middle School would close because the school is too old. Now you are making it into an elementary school. The School Board does the bidding of the mayor. The die has been cast.”
A common thread ran beneath the anger and the uncertainty: that class and race were the reasons why certain schools were targeted for closure.
Osiris Harrell, a parent activist who lives on the West Side, wanted to know why schools in his neighborhood were mostly composed of minority students while Vartan Gregorian Elementary School on the East Side is 47-percent white.
“If you want to show good faith to the black people of Providence, to the Latino people, to the Asian people, then send our children to a really good middle school,” he said, referring to Nathan Bishop Middle School on the East Side, which recently underwent a $45-million renovation.
“These schools are from our most oppressed areas,” said another parent, Sheila Wilhelm. “You’re closing these schools because you don’t think people will come out. Well, we’ve shut down School Board meetings before.”
There were the defenders of individual schools on the chopping block: the teachers from Asa Messer and Flynn Elementary Schools.
“This is my 20th year at Flynn,” said Paula Joel. Then she read a letter that she sends home every summer:
“I give you back your child a few months older and a few pounds heavier. Your child is also wiser than when he began this school year. I’ve watched his personality unfold. Ten years from now, if we meet again, we shall share that bond once more.”
Gina Sousa, a teacher at Asa Messer, described a school moving in the right direction, a school whose test scores in math and English have risen by almost 15 percent in the past two years. Asa Messer recently received a visit from state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, who commended the school for making substantial progress in math.
Morning commute in Genesee County better than expected; lots of school closings
GENESEE COUNTY, Michigan -- Driving down I-75 in northern Genesee County into downtown Flint, the roads were a bit slushy, but easily passable.
Most cars on the expressway were cruising along at about 50 mph, although some brave (or perhaps foolish) drivers were going faster.
I-475 also was clear with no major icy spots. The biggest danger on my commute was a clogged drain under a bridge in downtown Flint that had partially flooded the road.
Roads in downtown Flint remain not yet plowed as of 7:15 a.m., but still easily passable.
Still, drivers need to exercise caution: Police have been called to four crashes since 6:30 a.m. in Atlas Township, Forest Township, Montrose Township and Thetford Township. There are lots of reports of downed wires also coming in.
Many mid-Michigan schools have called off classes for Wednesday. You can find a complete list as schools announce cancellations by using this link to ABC12 WJRT
Most cars on the expressway were cruising along at about 50 mph, although some brave (or perhaps foolish) drivers were going faster.
I-475 also was clear with no major icy spots. The biggest danger on my commute was a clogged drain under a bridge in downtown Flint that had partially flooded the road.
Roads in downtown Flint remain not yet plowed as of 7:15 a.m., but still easily passable.
Still, drivers need to exercise caution: Police have been called to four crashes since 6:30 a.m. in Atlas Township, Forest Township, Montrose Township and Thetford Township. There are lots of reports of downed wires also coming in.
Many mid-Michigan schools have called off classes for Wednesday. You can find a complete list as schools announce cancellations by using this link to ABC12 WJRT
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