Alison Melnick joined the 乐播传媒 religious studies faculty as assistant professor in August 2015. (Josh Kuckens/乐播传媒 College)

“I think that people often associate studying religion with practicing religion,” says Alison Melnick, “instead of thinking about religious studies in terms of understanding a cultural tradition or a society different from their own.”

But it鈥檚 in the latter sense “that religious studies is really useful for students, regardless of their major or what their interests are,” explains Melnick, who came to 乐播传媒 in August as an assistant professor of religious studies.

Because religion is central to many cultures, “the important part of religious studies is to give students a sense of cultural sensitivity and cultural literacy” that will serve them both at 乐播传媒 and thereafter.

Meet other tenure-track faculty members new to 乐播传媒 in fall 2015:

• Henry Boateng, mathematics
• Carla Essenberg, biology
• Leshui He, economics

Cultural literacy including media literacy, she notes 鈥� “helping students learn to critique what they see in the media, and to understand that there are impressions that they鈥檙e going to develop about religious communities that are very frequently skewed in one way or another.”

“We give them the tools to keep questioning what they鈥檙e exposed to.”

Melnick’s own academic experience demonstrates how powerful an exposure to unfamiliar cultures can be. She is a scholar of Asian religions 鈥� but she was a political science major when she signed up for the University of Michigan study-abroad program in China and Tibet that set her on her current course.

Thanks to that experience, “my entire concept of what I wanted to do with my life shifted,” she says. “In being exposed to and immersed in new cultures, you have opportunities to completely change your perspective.鈥�

Melnick’s study-abroad group visited Tibet and Tibetan cultural regions in western China. The following year she had the opportunity to repeat the experience, this time working with faculty mentors who guided her in creating an independent research project.

“I was traveling to different nunneries and talking to Tibetan nuns,” she explains. “Learning about their daily lives, learning about what their religious practice was like, what their access to religious education was. It was really interesting.”

In turn, Melnick aims to involve her 乐播传媒 students in independent research beyond the confines of campus. “I hope to take students with me into the field in the summer, or possibly Short Term, and work with them on research that I鈥檓 interested in, but also give them a chance to do their own research.

“The idea is bring several students with me as I travel to different monasteries or nunneries, introduce them to interpreters who might help them conduct interviews, and so forth.”

“I feel like 乐播传媒 is just a great embodiment of the liberal arts.”

As a researcher, Melnick says, “I鈥檓 most concerned with bringing forth the story of women鈥檚 lives in the Asian religious world, specifically in the Tibetan and Chinese Buddhist worlds. Especially in the Tibetan tradition, we have a fair amount of unstudied texts about women within Buddhist communities. Sharing those stories is important to me.”

She adds, “I鈥檓 very interested in the role that gender plays in religious institutions and how gender dynamics affect the creation of those institutions” 鈥� and ideally, Melnick would love to collaborate with scholars investigating gender roles within other religious traditions.

A second research focus within Tibetan Buddhism is hagiography. “It’s this fascinating literary genre that talks about the lives of saints,” she explains, “but it incorporates historical material, it incorporates miracles, visions, dreams, and all sorts of other things.

“It鈥檚 one of the most prolific literary genres in Tibet. So it can be useful for us to understand Tibetan history, culture, society, and the evolution of Tibetan Buddhism.”

Melnick was excited to hear about the religious studies opening at 乐播传媒, a school she has admired for its senior thesis program, commitment to environmental sustainability, and especially quality of teaching. “I’ve been blown away by what I鈥檝e heard about 乐播传媒 鈥� about how students and faculty engage with each other in the classroom and in independent research for students.

“I feel like 乐播传媒 is just a great embodiment of the liberal arts.”

With no religious studies major offered at Michigan at the time, Melnick graduated in 2003 with an Asian studies degree, and earned advanced degrees in religious studies at the University of Virginia, where she was introduced to religious studies as a discipline.

Melnick lives in Lewiston with her husband, Eric Dyer, who works for Whole Foods in Portland. They are avid paddlers, campers, and hikers, and Melnick also works with fiber as a spinner and knitter.

John Strong, Charles A. Dana Professor of Religious Studies at 乐播传媒 and 2015 recipient of a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

With the Shroud of Turin perhaps the most widely known example, religious relics are a familiar aspect of Christian worship. But relics play important roles in many faiths, and understanding those roles can afford insight into how a faith is regarded by both adherents and observers.

Buddhism is such a religion. And a 乐播传媒 professor of religious studies has received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship to support research into ways in which Westerners, Buddhist and otherwise, have responded to relics 鈥� objects venerated as physical remains of the Buddha and of enlightened Buddhist teachers.

John Strong, Charles A. Dana Professor of Religious Studies and chair of the Asian studies program at 乐播传媒, is one of the 175 scholars, artists, and scientists to receive John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowships in 2015. (Two joint fellowships were awarded, making the total number of grants 173.) There were more than 3,100 Guggenheim applicants.

“Guggenheim Fellowships are reserved for scholars with exceptional creative ability,” says Matt Auer, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at 乐播传媒. “John Strong checks that box with a bold penstroke.”

Strong, Auer says, “has long been an intellectual leader in the field of Buddhist studies, and the project that he’ll undertake is a logical sequel to his pathbreaking 2004 book, Relics of the Buddha, which considers Buddhist attitudes towards Buddhism鈥檚 own relics. The timing for the new project is perfect considering a surge of Western interest in Asian religions generally, and Buddhism specifically.”

Relics are omnipresent throughout the Buddhist world.

For Strong, the fellowship will support research and travel during the sabbatical year, starting in August, that he will dedicate to a book tentatively titled Buddhist Relics in Western Eyes.

“Buddhist relics are omnipresent throughout the Buddhist world,” Strong says. “They’re just everywhere. There are some very famous relics, but there are also lots of generic, run-of-the-mill relics.”

In Buddhism, relics are substitutes or surrogates for an enlightened teacher who is absent or departed, “whereas in Christianity, a relic is kind of a conduit to the living saint, or to Christ himself, in Heaven.”

The relics can include objects that a teacher is said to have used, or body parts such as bone fragments and teeth. Distinct to Buddhism are so-called ringsel, a Tibetan word referring to objects that resemble pearls, beads, or crystals, and are said to be found in the remains of an enlightened teacher or master after cremation.

As Strong explains, “Relics almost always have elaborate pedigrees associated with them. There are lineages that are legendary accounts of their transmission through the years. In Western China, there’s a famous finger bone relic of the Buddha.

“There’s a tooth relic pagoda in Beijing, so even the communist government is keeping these relics as part of their association with Buddhist countries in South Asia.”

Strong’s book project will trace the history of Western encounters with Buddhist relics through a series of episodes 鈥� beginning with the capture by Portuguese explorers of a tooth relic of the Buddha in India, and the Europeans’ public destruction of the relic as undesirable evidence of heathen religion.

The work will culminate with an exploration of the Maitreya Loving Kindness Tour.

Another section will look at 19th-century religious philosophers who understood Buddhism as a rational non-theistic religion. There was no place for relics in their view of Buddhism, and so they considered veneration of relics to be superstitious and ancillary to “real” Buddhist practice that, Strong says, “was all about meditation and mind development and achieving enlightenment.”

The work will culminate with an exploration of the Maitreya Loving Kindness Tour, an ongoing international touring show of relics of the Buddha and other Buddhist masters from India, Tibet, and China.

The Maitreya exhibition traces “a whole lineage of Tibetan teachers, starting with the Buddha and going through the centuries almost up to the present,” explains Strong, “including some famous teachers like Milarepa, who is said to have declared at the end of his life that he would leave no relics at all, yet here they are.”

Strong will do research at the Maitreya headquarters and archives in London, and attend some of the tour’s exhibitions in Europe. “I’m interested in trying to gauge people’s reactions to this display,” he says.

Strong’s research to date suggests the emergence of an unexpected kind of interest in Buddhist relics: In addition to practicing Buddhists who have a traditional understanding of relics, there appears to be an increasing number of Westerners who ascribe major life changes 鈥� such as a cure for chronic illness 鈥� to an experience with Buddhist relics.

“That all seems like something new in Western accounts of Buddhist relics,” he says.

In addition to Relics of the Buddha, Strong’s books include The Legend of King A艣oka (Princeton, 1983); The Legend and Cult of Upagupta (Princeton, 1992); The Experience of Buddhism (Wadsworth, 1995); The Buddha: A Short Biography (Oneworld Publications, 2001); and Buddhisms: An Introduction, slated for publication by Oneworld in August.

Strong came to 乐播传媒 in 1978. He holds degrees from Oberlin College, Hartford Seminary Foundation, and the University of Chicago, where he earned a doctorate in the history of religions. A specialist in Buddhist studies, he focuses on Buddhist legendary and cultic traditions in India and South Asia.

It manifests very much in certain situations.聽 For example, I tend to 鈥済et Buddhist鈥� when I lose things.聽 Impermanence man.聽 And usually I can let things go that way.聽 However, this year for the first time I lost something that no amount of Buddhist rationalizing could temper the sense of loss I was feeling.聽 The object that was lost: a fake fur stole.聽 Now this was a fake fur mass that one drapes around one鈥檚 neck and it creates a luxurious fur collar.聽 It made me feel about 75 years old and glamorous.聽 In short, I loved it.聽 But anyway, I mistakenly took this fur stole out with me to a show on a Friday night.聽 A tip for all 乐播传媒 students: don鈥檛 bring anything you like out with you on a weekend night.聽 It will be gone.聽 And you will be sad.聽 Like I was when I couldn鈥檛 find my fur stole after the show.聽 I lamented the entire night and into the morning.聽 When I woke up still depressed, I decided a simple acceptance of impermanence wouldn鈥檛 cut it.聽 Buddhism wasn鈥檛 enough.聽 I needed to feel the sweet warmth of that stole around my neck, not find the Middle Way.聽 So I hopped in my car to drive over to the place where the concert was held for maybe it wasn鈥檛 stolen and I would find it and could move on with my life.聽 As I was driving there, I saw a mass of fur by the side of the road.聽 It was my stole!聽 I can鈥檛 tell you how happy I was!聽 I leapt out of the car and put it immediately around my neck.聽 It smelled a bit as I had just taken it off the ground and it had been outside all night but it was my stole.聽 It was great.

Journalist Bill Porter, aka “Red Pine,” will make two presentations about the relationship of the environment to Chinese history and culture at 乐播传媒 College on Thursday, March 22. Both events are free and open to the public.

At 9:30 a.m. in Room 204 of the Carnegie Science Center, 44 Campus Ave., Porter will discuss the Chinese hermit tradition and associations around the hermit in Western culture, with some forays into poetry and philosophy. The presentation includes slides and discussion.

At 4:15 p.m. in Room 104 of the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St., will give a slide presentation titled Yellow River Odyssey, based on a 1991 journey he took from the mouth of the river to its source on the Tibetan Plateau. His original trip to the river’s source, the first ever undertaken by a Westerner, resulted in a series of 240 radio programs introducing listeners to Chinese history and culture and their relationship to the river.

Porter is a translator of Chinese poetry and Buddhist texts. He worked as a journalist at English-language radio stations in Taiwan and Hong Kong, where he produced more than 1,000 programs about his travels in China. Porter has published more than a dozen books and won a number of literary awards. His recent publications include translations of the most important sutras used in and China’s most popular anthology of its poetry.

Porter’s visit to 乐播传媒 College, offered in the context of the 乐播传媒 environmental studies seminar “Nature and Human Culture” taught by Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Jonathan Skinner, is sponsored by the environmental studies program. For more information, contact Skinner at this聽jskinner@bates.edu.

Professor emeritus of religious and East Asian studies, Middlebury College, Keenan has published translations of Yogacara (a Sanskrit term literally meaning ‘practice of yoga’) Buddhist texts and has incorporated Mahayana Buddhist philosophy (which includes diverse beliefs, various sects and trends) in his teaching and his pastoral work as a priest. The author of The Meaning of Christ: A Mahayana Theology (Orbis Books, 1989) and the forthcoming The Letter of James: Everyday Practice for Everyday Christians,the currently serves as the vicar of St. Nicholas Church in Scarborough.