SHORT TALKS ON BIG IDEAS
Episode 4: Professor Reiko Ohnuma on Buddha's Two Mothers
Join Robert 1932 and Barbara Black Professor of Religion and Chair, Department of Religion Reiko Ohnuma as she talks about the ancient faith traditions of Buddhism and how gender issues and narrative literature have affected the philosophy as we know it today.
Professor Reiko Ohnuma
Reiko Ohnuma is a specialist in the Buddhist traditions of South Asia (with a particular focus on narrative literature, hagiography, and the role and imagery of women), but also teaches courses on Hinduism. She holds a B.A. from the University of California (Berkeley) and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). She is the author of Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood: Giving Away the Body in Indian Buddhist Literature (Columbia University Press, 2007); Ties That Bind: Maternal Imagery and Discourse in Indian Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2012); and Unfortunate Destiny: Animals in the Indian Buddhist Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2017).
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
Charles Hallisey, trans., Therigatha: Poems of the First Buddhist Women (Harvard University Press, 2015).
Amy Langenberg, Birth in Buddhism: The Suffering Fetus and Female Freedom (Routledge Press, 2017).
Reiko Ohnuma, Ties That Bind: Maternal Imagery and Discourse in Indian Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Alan Sponberg, “Attitudes Toward Women and the Feminine in Early Buddhism,” in Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender, ed. José Ignacio Cabezón (State University of New York Press, 1992), pp. 3-36.
John S. Strong, The Buddha: A Short Biography (Oneworld, 2001).