The Future of Buddhist Studies

In early 2020, scholar and professor Natalie Gummer planned a roundtable called "Manifestos for Buddhist Studies" for the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion. A couple months later, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the roundtable was postponed until the following year. In that time, Gummer began to reflect on her proposed structure and the voices she was leaving out. "I noticed that the criteria I had used to determine who would be on the panel were the same criteria that often gets used in Buddhist studies," she shared. "I wanted to find ways to broaden the range of perspectives represented."