Support H-Net | Buy Books Here | Help Support the NBN and NBN en Español on Patreon | Visit New Books Network en Español!
- African Studies
- African American Studies
- American Politics
- American Studies
- American South
- American West
- Asian American Studies
- Australian and New Zealand Studies
- British Studies
- Canadian Studies
- Caribbean Studies
- Central Asian Studies
- Chinese Studies
- East Asian Studies
- Eastern European Studies
- European Politics
- French Studies
- German Studies
- Iberian Studies
- India Studies
- Indian Ocean World
- Iranian Studies
- Irish Studies
- Israel Studies
- Italian Studies
- Japanese Studies
- Korean Studies
- Latino Studies
- Latin American Studies
- Mexican Studies
- Middle Eastern Studies
- Native American Studies
- Pacific Studies
- Polish Studies
- Russian and Eurasian Studies
- Southeast Asian Studies
- South Asian Studies
- Turkish Studies
- Ukrainian Studies
- Western European Studies
- World Affairs
- Animal Studies
- Anthropology
- Archaeology
- Business, Management, and Marketing
- Media
- Critical Theory
- Disability Studies
- Drugs, Addiction and Recovery
- Education
- Economics
- Finance
- Geography
- Gender Studies
- Genocide Studies
- Higher Education
- Human Rights
- Journalism
- Language
- Law
- LGBTQ+ Studies
- National Security
- Philanthropy
- Philosophy
- Policing, Incarceration, and Reform
- Political Science
- Politics & Polemics
- Public Policy
- Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work
- Sociology
- Sound Studies
- Sports
- Urban Studies
- Big Ideas
- Celebration Studies
- Co-Authored
- Cover Story
- Historical Materialism
- History Ex Silo
- Interpretive Political and Social Science
- Invested Investor
- Landscape Architecture
- Late Antiquity
- Mormonism
- NBN Book of the Day
- NBN Seminar
- Postscript
- Practical History
- Preparing for Life After Grad School
- Psychology and Climate Change
- Syriac Studies
- The Chair: In The Room at the Fed
- New Books with Miranda Melcher
About Jessica Zu
Jessica Zu is an intellectual historian and a scholar of Buddhist philosophy. She is currently working on her book manuscript—Just Awakening: Yogācāra Social Philosophy in Modern China. Her next book-length project—Liberation Buddhology and its Elite Capture—investigates the philosophical innovations that undergirded Buddhist anti-colonial, anti-caste, and pro-democracy movements across Asia and their appropriation by nationalist elites. Meanwhile, she is also exploring the viability of another long-term research—Quantum Buddhism: Spirituality for a Scientific World—which studies the simultaneous encounters of Buddhism with quantum physics in China, Japan, India, Thailand, and the US as integral parts of a worldwide revival of process philosophies spurred by Darwinism, quantum physics, and the problem of consciousness.Jessica Zu is an intellectual historian and a scholar of Buddhist studies. She is an assistant professor of religion at the University of Southern California.
NBN Episodes hosted by Jessica:
July 20, 2024
The Women Who Ruled China
In the late fifth century, a girl whose name has been forgotten by history was born at the edge of the Chinese empire. By the time of her death, she h…
July 6, 2024
Karma and Grace
Around the turn of the millennium, Pentecostal churches began to pepper majority-Buddhist Sri Lanka, setting off a sense of alarm among Buddhists who …
May 23, 2024
Embodying Xuanzang
Xuanzang (600/602–664) was one of the most accomplished and consequential monks in the history of East Asian Buddhism. Celebrated for his sixteen-year…
May 17, 2024
Esoteric Buddhism in China
During the Republican period (1912–1949) and after, many Chinese Buddhists sought inspiration from non-Chinese Buddhist traditions, showing a particul…
April 4, 2024
Making Sense of Mind Only
Through engaging, contemporary examples, Making Sense of Mind Only: Why Yogacara Buddhism Matters (Wisdom Publications, 2023) reveals the Yogacara sch…
March 18, 2024
A Part Apart
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) is perhaps the most iconised historical figure in India. Born into a caste deemed ‘unfit for human association’, he…
November 29, 2023
Chinese Cosmopolitanism
A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastr…
November 10, 2023
Dancing in My Dreams
If you don’t know Tina Turner’s spirituality, you don’t know Tina.When Tina Turner reclaimed her throne as the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the 1980s, sh…
October 16, 2023
Tagore's University
Swati Ganguly's book Tagore's University: A History of Visva-Bharati, 1921-1961 (New India Foundation, 2022) is for anyone who is searching for tangib…
September 19, 2023
Moral Relativism and Pluralism
Today I talked to David B. Wong about his book Moral Relativism and Pluralism (Cambridge UP, 2023). The argument for metaethical relativism--the view…
July 30, 2023
Nonexistent Objects in Buddhist Philosophy
Can we know what there is not? Zhihua Yao's Nonexistent Objects in Buddhist Philosophy: On Knowing What There is Not (Bloomsbury, 2020) examines the…
June 16, 2023
Dust on the Throne
Received wisdom has it that Buddhism disappeared from India, the land of its birth, between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, long forgotten un…
April 8, 2023
Adapting
Philosophy of action in the context of Classical China is radically different from its counterpart in the contemporary Western philosophical narrative…
March 25, 2023
Toward a New Image of Paramartha
Today I talked to Ching Keng about his book Toward a New Image of Paramartha: Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha Buddhism Revisited (Bloomsbury, 2022). Yog…
March 22, 2023
Until Nirvana's Time
A unique Buddhist tradition, accessible in English for the first time—translations of forty-five Cambodian Dharma songs, with contextualizing essays a…
January 9, 2023
Grassroots Activism of Ancient China
Hung-Yok Ip's Grassroots Activism of Ancient China: Mohism and Nonviolence (Lexington Books, 2022) examines Mohism as a movement in early China, focus…
December 23, 2022
Practicescapes and the Buddhists of Baoshan
How should one dwell in endtime? In this SPIDER-spun web of a book, Wendi Adamek guides readers to the visual and textual traces left by Buddhist nuns…
December 17, 2022
Comparing Husserl's Phenomenology and Chinese Yogacara in a Multicultural World
Comparing Husserl’s Phenomenology and Chinese Yogacara in a Multicultural World: A Journey Beyond Orientalism by Jingjing Li (Bloomsbury, 2022) starts…