John Strong, Charles A. Dana Professor of Religious Studies at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and 2015 recipient of a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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 — 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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, 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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. “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’s 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 — 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 — such as a cure for chronic illness — 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 AÅ›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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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.

Robert Feintuch, a member of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College studio art faculty who is celebrated for his droll, evocative paintings, has received a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship.

The New York City-based John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation this year awarded 190 fellowships to artists, scientists and scholars. According to the foundation’s , Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of stellar achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment.

Individual grants in 2008 averaged $43,000, with awards totaling over $8 million.A resident of New York City, Feintuch will use the Guggenheim to support the creation of a body of work for his next exhibition at New York’s CRG Gallery in 2009.

“As both a vital, expressive painter and someone who knows intimately the demands of a career in creative work, Robert is a valuable teacher and mentor to our students and faculty,” says Jill Reich, dean of the faculty at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

“We are delighted that he has this support that provides him time to reflect and hone his creative edge.”

A senior lecturer in the art and visual culture department at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Feintuch is known for “an extraordinary kind of realist painting that is both conceptual and figurative,” as Artnet.com reviewer David Ebony described it. Feintuch hands his faceless, undressed figures ordinary or comic objects that become mysterious and suggestive in the context of the pictures.

He explains that unbroken stretches of concentrated painting enable him to make his best work. “When I’m working well and I’ve had enough time in the studio, I feel immersed in the stream of images I find, and one begins to lead to another,” he says.

Feintuch has an M.F.A. from Yale University and a B.F.A. from Cooper Union. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, Art Forum, ARTnews and Flash Art.

He has shown work in galleries including CRG, the Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston, and such overseas venues as the Studio La Citta in Verona, Italy, and Galerie Alfred Kren in Cologne, Germany. Feintuch has also participated in group exhibitions including “Figuration” at the Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano, Italy, and “I Love You More Than My Own Death” at the Venice Biennale.

Since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has awarded more than $265 million in fellowships to more than 16,000 individuals — among them such figures as Ansel Adams, W. H. Auden, Aaron Copland, Martha Graham, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, Vladimir Nabokov, Linus Pauling, Philip Roth, Wendy Wasserstein, Derek Walcott, James Watson and Eudora Welty.

Previous Guggenheim recipients with a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ connection include William Pope.L, a senior lecturer in the theater department and a nationally known conceptual artist, and William Stringfellow, a member of the Class of 1949 known as a peace activist, human rights lawyer and theologian.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art presents “The Black Factory,” an installation by nationally acclaimed visual and performance artist William Pope.L, from 2:30 to 5 p.m. Thursday, May 6, at the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

The recipient this month of a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, Pope.L is known for his provocative explorations of culture and consumerism. The Black Factory is his most participatory, community-oriented project yet, aiming to re-energize discussions about race in America by inviting people to share objects that represent “blackness” to them.

During the past year at locations including ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, where he has been a lecturer in the Department of Theater and Rhetoric for 12 years, Pope.L held events to collect such items from the public. These objects are incorporated into The Black Factory, a truck equipped to manipulate and present the objects in various ways.

Starting May 31, The Black Factory will appear at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, in North Adams, in a group exhibition titled The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere. For more information about the exhibit, visit the MassMoCA home page:

http://www.massmoca.org/index.html

Earlier in April, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced this year’s recipients of the Guggenheim Fellowship, including Pope.L, whose award will support his installation work. The purpose of the Guggenheim program is to help provide fellows with blocks of time in which they can work with as much creative freedom as possible. He was one of 185 fellowship recipients in the United States and Canada, out of 3,268 applicants. Fellowships totaled $6,912,000, making the average award worth $37,362.

Working in sculpture, performance and installations, Pope.L has consistently challenged his audiences to confront and re-examine American notions about race, class, pop culture and consumerism. His work has been recognized by a host of awards and major profiles in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The New York Times, among other publications.

In Maine, Pope.L may be best-known for eRacism, a retrospective exhibition at the Maine College of Art that later toured to Texas, Oregon and New York.

The recipient this spring of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, Pope.L is known for his provocative explorations of culture and consumerism. The Black Factory is his most participatory, community-oriented project yet, aiming to re-energize discussions about race in America by inviting people to share objects that represent “blackness” to them.

During the past year at locations including ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, where he has been a lecturer in the Department of Theater and Rhetoric for 12 years, Pope.L held events to collect such items from the public. These objects are incorporated into the Black Factory installation, a truck equipped to manipulate and present the objects in various ways.

Starting May 31, the Black Factory will appear at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, in North Adams, in a group exhibition titled The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere. For more information about the exhibit, visit the MassMoCA home page: http://www.massmoca.org/index.html

Working in sculpture, performance and installations, Pope.L has consistently challenged his audiences to confront and re-examine American notions about race, class, pop culture and consumerism. His work has been recognized by a host of awards and major profiles in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The New York Times, among other publications.

In Maine, Pope.L may be best-known for “eRacism,” a retrospective exhibition at the Maine College of Art that later toured to Texas, Oregon and New York.