Wedemeyer, C.

Full Name

Christian Konrad Wedemeyer

Affiliation

Associate Professor of the History of Religions
University of Chicago Divinity School

Contact Information

Swift Hall

Office 310B

Phone (773) 702-8265

Email: wedemeyer@uchicago.edu

Other Information

• Personal Webpage: http://home.uchicago.edu/~aryadeva/Christians_Website/Welcome.html

• University of Chicago website: https://divinity.uchicago.edu/christian-k-wedemeyer

Christian K. Wedemeyer

Associate Professor of the History of Religions; Associate Faculty in South Asian Languages and Civilizations; also in the College

MA, MPhil, PhD (Columbia University)

Christian Wedemeyer is an historian of religions whose interests comprehend theory and method in the human sciences, the history of modern scholarship on religion and culture, and issues of history, textuality, and ritual in the Buddhist traditions. Within these very general domains, much of his research has concerned the esoteric (Tantric) Buddhism of India and Tibet. He has written on the modern historiography of Tantric Buddhism; antinomianism in the Indian esoteric traditions; canonicity, textual criticism, and strategies of legitimating authority in classical Tibetan scholasticism; and the semiology of esoteric Buddhist ritual.

His most recent book, Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism: History, Semiology, and Transgression in the Indian Traditions (Columbia University Press, 2012), received the 2013 American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion (Historical Studies). Previously, he authored a text-critical study of one of the principal Indian works on esoteric praxis: Āryadeva’s Lamp that Integrates the Practices (Caryāmelāpakapradīpa): The Gradual Path of Vajrayāna Buddhism according to the Esoteric Community Noble Tradition (critically edited Sanskrit and Tibetan texts, annotated English translation, and study; American Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2007). He has coedited three volumes: Tibetan Buddhist Literature and Praxis: Studies in its Formative Period, 900 – 1400 (Brill 2006, with Ronald M. Davidson), Hermeneutics, Politics, and the History of Religions: The Contested Legacies of Joachim Wach and Mircea Eliade (Oxford 2010, with Wendy Doniger), and In Vimalakīrti’s House: A Festschrift in Honor of Robert A.F. Thurman on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday (AIBS 2013, with John D. Dunne and Thomas F. Yarnall).

He is currently working on a collection of translations of ritual texts related to the Guhyasamāja Tantra and is developing a monograph on commentarial practices in Tantric Buddhism.

His course offerings include Classical Theories of Religion, Contemporary Perspectives on the History of Religions, Introduction to Religion and the Human Sciences, Indian Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Mahayana Sutra Literature, Issues in Indian Esoteric Buddhism, Tibetan Auto/biography, Buddhism in the Americas, and Ritual in South Asian Buddhism. (Source Accessed Jan 19, 2015)

The esoteric Buddhist tradition which developed as a syncretic system involving deity worship, use of mantras, physical energy, and mystical practices. It is also known as the mantra tradition and the tantric school as a result of being based on texts known as tantras.

The American Institute of Buddhist Studies (AIBS) created by Robert Thurman at Columbia University in New York. http://aibs.columbia.edu/

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